Recession will ease in 18 months: Montek

The recessionary trend in the global economy would last another 18 months and India has designed a "broad plan" to keep the crisis at bay, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Saturday.

Although he did not specify what the broad plan was, Ahluwalia said implementation of this plan would not only insulate the economy, but help it grow stronger than other economies by 2010.

He said that India has foreign reserves that are enough to weather any kind of crisis for the next three years even if foreign investment flows are affected.

The impact on investment flows would be temporary and the flows would eventually increase once again, he said addressing the 91st National Conference of the Indian Economic Association here.

India's foreign exchange reserves, made up of foreign currency remittances and bullion assets among others, stood at about $250 billion as of mid-December.

Even as economists the world over are struggling to say if the world has seen the worst of the crisis, Ahluwalia said the global recession would last for the next 18 months.

He said the union government has already announced several monetary and fiscal measures to tide over the immediate impact of crisis, but did not say what the 'broad plan' was.

Ahluwalia was confident that the economic growth would not dip below seven per cent under any circumstance.