NEW DELHI - INDIA insisted on Tuesday its economy would rebound next year from the impact of the global financial crisis, saying it expected to return to 'much better growth' of nine per cent.

'What's required now is confidence, courage and taking the steps that are necessary to compensate for the ill-effects of a world slowdown', Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told an international business meeting.

'We will be back to a high growth rate (of nine per cent) in the second half of the financial year 2009/10', he said in New Delhi. 'We will bounce back to much better growth rates'.

Mr Chidambaram said the lowest official forecast for growth in Asia's third-largest economy was seven per cent for the year to March 2009 which was not 'an occasion for wearing sack cloth and ashes' when compared to anaemic growth rates abroad.

India's economy has grown by at least nine per cent for the past three years.

The minister said it would be 'helpful' if domestic interest rates could come down further but that authorities could not take their eyes completely off inflation, riding at close to 10 per cent.

'But the bias has shifted in favour of (stimulating) growth', he told the India World Economic Forum.

He said the Congress-led government, which faces general elections by May and is anxious not to allow the economic situation to worsen further, was on the 'job 24/7'.

The minister's upbeat comments were in sharp contrast to some private forecasters who see growth in the current fiscal year at around 6.8 per cent and next year as low as 5.5 per cent as India is hit by the global downturn. -- AFP