Financial crisis will provide new opportunities: Sonia Gandhi

New Delhi, Nov 21 (IANS) The global financial contagion would provide new opportunities for the future and there was no need for India to get back to the era of controls, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said here Friday.

'It is too early to say the economic crisis is contained. We believe in an open and not unregulated economy,' she said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Sonia Gandhi, who spoke from a prepared text at the summit, unlike earlier occasions where there was a free-wheeling discussion among participants, said the financial crisis would affect the 'most vulnerable' sections of society who had nothing to do with 'fancy' financial instruments and had to contend with a hard day's work.

'Should they become victims of a few bankers greed? It is our duty to ensure what action we must take for them.'

Earlier Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exuded confidence that India 'can and will survive' the current global financial crisis to sustain an eight percent economic growth and promised every possible measure to promote development and entrepreneurship.