India to surrender aid if UK decides to cut it: Pranab
NEW DELHI: India will prefer to voluntarily surrender the grant it receives from United Kingdom if the British government decided on cutting it, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Rajya Sabha today.
He said during Question Hour that New Delhi has "made it clear" to the Cameron administration that "we will voluntarily surrender" aid should UK decide to cut it.
India's stand was made clear during the recent visit of British Prime Minister and UK government was asked to give it prior information on any decision to cut the aid. "We don't require the aid... we will voluntarily surrender it," he said.
The new government in the United Kingdom has commissioned a review of each of their bilateral aid programmes being implemented by the Department for International Development (DFID) with recipient countries globally to determine where UK resources are most needed.
"The status/findings of the review of the UK government has not yet been communicated," he said.
The UK aid is being received for health, education and poverty alleviation programmes in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Mukherjee said the external assistance forms just 0.4 per cent of India's GDP and its share in the total budgetary expenditure on developmental schemes has gone down to 2.5 per cent from 3.4 per cent.
"It is peanuts in our total development expenditure," he said.
The government, he said, has inbuilt appraisal mechanism to look into complaints about misuse or diversion of the grants from multilateral agencies or bilateral aid.
