Flere andre donorlande har gjort det – også Danmark – nu sker det også i Storbritannien, hvor den konservativ-liberale regering lukker for bistanden til det frembrusede Indien over få år – det er New Delhi ikke utilfreds med, mens de 360 mio. ekstremt fattige formentlig ser anderledes på det.
The UK is to end financial development aid to India by 2015, international development secretary (udviklingsminister) Justine Greening has said, reports BBC online Friday.
Giving his reaction, India’s foreign minister Salman Khurshid said: “Aid is the past and trade is the future.”
But charities warned it would be the poorest who suffered. A third of the world’s poorest people still live in India.
Until last year, when it was overtaken by Ethiopia, India was the biggest recipient of bilateral aid from the UK, receiving an average of 227 million pounds a year in direct financial support over the past three years.
This has been a cause of concern among Conservative MPs, many of whom believed that the UK should not be giving money to a country which has a multi-million pound space programme.
The move is also a recognition, that India is now the third largest investor in the UK and the largest market for British goods outside the EU.
By focusing post-2015 support on trade, skills (technical assistance) and assisting private sector anti-poverty projects which can generate a return on investment, the UK estimates its overall contribution will be one-tenth of the current figure.
The UK government said, that 60 million Indians have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the doubling of spending on health and education since 2006. India spends 70 billion pounds on its social welfare budget, compared with 2,2 billion on defence and 780 million on space exploration.
The UK government is increasing the overall overseas development budget, and wants to focus on the poorest countries and those scarred by recent conflict.
