Britain to end aid to India

LONDON: Britain will stop all aid to India in 2015 and the assistance budget will be reduced by around £200 million ($320 million) until then, the international development minister said yesterday.
Justine Greening, who visited Britain’s former colony for talks earlier this week, said the move recognizes India’s “changing place in the world” and that the money would now go to poorer countries.
Britain’s aid to India has long been a controversial issue for Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, with London paying money to a country that can fund its own space program at a time when British taxpayers face harsh austerity.
“After reviewing the program and holding discussions with the Government of India this week, we agreed that now is the time to move to a relationship focusing on skills-sharing rather than aid,” Greening said.
British funding to India was cut last year but still committed the UK to spending £280 million a year until 2015. Total spending between 2013 and 2015 will now be £200 million less than had been planned previously, Greening said.
Greening said Britain’s relationship with India would now focus on “trade not aid”.
“Having visited India I have seen first hand the tremendous progress being made. India is successfully developing and our own bilateral relationship has to keep up with 21st century India,” Greening said.
“It’s time to recognize India’s changing place in the world.”
Britain has previously defended its aid payments to India on the basis that tens of millions of Indians live in poverty, and Greening said that it would complete all its programs there.
“It is of course critical that we fulfill all the commitments we have already made and that we continue with those short-term projects already underway which are an important part of the UK and government of India’s development program.”
The Department of International Development statement confirmed: “Justine Greening will not sign off any new programs, and financial aid programs to the country will end completely in 2015.”
Cameron has rejected growing pressure from lawmakers in his center-right Conservative party to scrap his pledge to spend 0.7 percent of national income on overseas aid.
But a cut in Britain’s aid to India has been on the cards for some time.
Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid had on Thursday signaled the country would soon stop receiving aid from Britain after holding talks with William Hague, his counterpart from London.
“Aid is the past and trade is the future, so we are looking to the future,” Khurshid told reporters in New Delhi after meetings with Hague.