India to surrender aid if UK decides to cut it: Pranab

New Delhi, Aug 17 (PTI) 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 (Upper House of Parliament)
Tuesday.
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 the Indian states of 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. PTI ANZ
RDM


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