New Delhi, Friday 21 November 2008: India will sustain a growth rate of eight per cent despite the adverse impact of the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Friday.

“We have the ability to sustain a growth rate of about eight percent. And we will do so,” he said.

Exuding confidence that India had the “resources and the wisdom to grapple and deal” with the crisis, PM said all instruments of public policy -monetary, fiscal, public investment and exchange rate, “will be deployed” to tackle it.

Noting that the global economy was going through “choppy waters”, the Prime Minister said, “we can and we will survive this crisis”.

Observing that the global economy was passing through a “deep crisis”, the economist-turned-politician said “we cannot pretend that we are not affected by it.

“The crisis was not made in our country but elsewhere.Due to the interdependency (of the world economies), we are in the same boat,” the Prime Minister said.