London, Dec 29 (ANI): Britain is funding aid to Brazil even though it has overtaken the UK to become the world's sixth-largest economy.
Whitehall officials admitted yesterday that millions has been handed over in development aid in recent years despite the fact that Brazil has become richer than Britain.
The continuing aid to Brazil comes against a background of deepening criticism of the Coalition's foreign aid plans and its determination to keep raising spending on development in supposedly poor countries.
The Cameron administration has pledged to raise aid spending, currently worth 9 billion pounds a year and 0.57 per cent of national income, to 0.7 per cent. Aid spending went up by 1.24 billion pounds in the last financial year alone, The Daily Mail reports.et money continues to be poured into wealthy and fast-growing countries like India, and even aid to China, second in the world economic league, the paper said.
Figures on the website of the Department For International Development revealed that 13.6million pounds worth of taxpayer-funded development schemes for Brazil remain 'operational'.
DFID officials said that the spending was 'historic' and included projects dating from the 1990s, and that they were listed as remaining in operation only because of 'an IT error'.
But they acknowledged that taxpayers' money is still going in aid to Brazil, in the form of a 730,000 pound 'large emerging economies programme' to 'develop a shared agenda and promote global poverty reduction objectives.'
Tory MP Douglas Carswell said the figures showed the ministry was 'not about helping economies to grow'.
'Aid spending is more about the commitment of DFID officials to expanding their own budgets than helping economic growth. If we really wanted to help economic growth in poor countries we would do it through free trade and cutting tariffs," he added. (ANI)
|
|
Comments:
