DFID's annual India grant at Rs 1,500 crore

The UK-based Department for International Development (DFID) will spend about Rs 1,500 crore annually from 2004-08 under its Country Assistance Plan for India.

DFID India chief Charlotte Seymore-Smith said at a press conference on Tuesday the agency would strengthen its National Programme with the Centre, while continuing to provide assistance to the four focus states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Orissa. These states will receive about two-thirds of DFID's budget for 2004.

Seymore-Smith said DFID's National Programme would be involved with the drive towards compulsory education and would help set up a fund to strengthen the poor to understand and demand their rights.

The programmes also include the reduction of infant mortality from its present level by two-thirds by 2015, reduction of maternal mortality by three quarters in the same period and arrest the spread of AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Seymore-Smith said this would contribute to India achieving its Tenth Plan poverty reduction objectives and the millennium development goals.

India is the largest country programme of DFID and in 2002-03 it has disbursed about Rs 1,160 crore, she said. The aid is in the form of a grant and is not tied to the UK's commercial interests.

Seymore-Smith said DFID was also sponsoring the commerce ministry's partnership with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to identify opportunities for pro-poor growth in the ongoing WTO negotiations.

She said a financial deepening challenge fund to provide market access for the poor was in the offing. The partnership also involves other development agencies like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNICEF, WHO and UNCTAD.