NEW DELHI, Nov 18: India insisted on Tuesday its economy would rebound next year from the global financial crisis, saying it expected to return to robust growth of nine per cent. “What’s required now is confidence, courage and taking the steps necessary to compensate for the ill-effects of a world slowdown,” Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told an international business meeting.

“We’ll bounce back... we’ll be back to a high growth rate (of nine per cent) in the second half of the financial year 2009/10,” he told the annual India World Economic Forum attended by 700 delegates from India and around the world.

However, observers were sceptical, suggesting he was talking up the growth prospects of Asia’s third-largest economy with the Congress-led government facing general elections by May 2009.

“There’s an unwillingness to admit reality,” Percy Mistry, chairman of Oxford International Finance, told AFP, adding he did not expect any upturn until early 2011.—AFP