British Lawmakers: ‘Don’t Give Nigeria, Ghana Aid Again’

British lawmakers have told the country’s leaders to halt aid handouts to all but the poorest countries.
In a major report, the Commons international development committee says it is “increasingly difficult to make the case” for lavishing hundreds of millions of pounds on countries capable of standing on their own two feet, reports the Daily Mail.
Increasingly prosperous nations such as Nigeria, Ghana and Pakistan should be offered cheap loans rather than being given huge handouts by the British taxpayer, the report says.
And the Department for International Development (DFID) should draw up a timetable for withdrawing aid altogether from all but the world’s most destitute states.
Britain’s aid budget has increased by 30 per cent in the past year to £11billion to hit Prime Minister David Cameron’s controversial target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid.

But the report reveals that the proportion of the budget spent in the world’s poorest countries has fallen from 85 per cent in 2006-07 to 65 per cent last year. MPs said they were “surprised to see a huge fall in the percentage of aid spending on low income countries”.
The committee’s Liberal Democrat chairman Sir Malcolm Bruce said future aid to so-called lower middle income countries should be targeted at encouraging private sector growth and should be “provided in the form of returnable capital wherever feasible”.
The report will fuel controversy about the 0.7 per cent aid target. It points out that, even before this year’s huge budget increase, Britain was spending almost double the average spent by developed countries on aid.
Ministers have sanctioned huge aid payments to middle-income countries in recent years as total aid spending has increased. Nigeria received £197 million last year, Pakistan £189.2 million and Ghana £51.8 million.
Yet all three are now officially classed as being lower middle income nations, as is India, which received £292million.
A DFID spokesman said the department was already moving towards using loans in some cases.
Support for the Daily Mail’s petition calling for foreign aid to be diverted to the floods crisis continues to grow.
Nearly 153,000 had signed the petition, which was to be presented to the Prime Minister, last night.
Flood victims, MPs and community leaders have backed the campaign calling for some of the UK’s £11 billion development budget to be used to cope with the escalating disaster.
David Cameron has rejected the call, saying money will be made available from existing funds. But thousands have questioned his promise that “money is no object”, as ministers said there was “no blank cheque” for flood recovery.
Critics insist that the foreign aid budget – some of which has gone to corrupt regimes or to wealthy nations with their own space programmes – should be diverted to the domestic crisis.
Alfred Vanpelt, 51, of the Flooding On The Levels Action Group in Somerset, said: “We fully support the Daily Mail’s petition and hope it will raise the vital money needed for the communities and businesses who not only desperately need it, but who are often completely forgotten about.’
Louise Thorne, 42, from Crowcombe, Somerset, said: “Britain is always the first to help in a crisis but down here we’ve been totally ignored. We need money diverted to people who really need it.”
Tory MP Peter Bone said: “The Daily Mail is speaking for the British people on this issue.”
Fellow Tory Douglas Carswell said it made sense to divert aid money, adding: “It is extraordinary that the only people who can’t see it are the denizens of Westminster.”