You had a product development idea in mind for a long time and this semester you decided to start working on developing this product. Knowing that this project will take at least $2$ to $3$ years and cost a lot of money, you decided to borrow some money so you can finance the project.

After talking with a few lenders, the best interest rate you found was $8\%$ per year. If you decide to use the NVP method as your economic analyses tool, what discount rate $($r$)$ should you use in the calculations?