London: British government is facing renewed pressure to halt its aid to India at the earliest after latest figures showed the latter's economy is set to grow by 6.5 percent next year and 7.2 the year after.
International Development Secretary Justine Greening has already announced Britain's 280 million pounds (over $448 million) annual handout to India would end in 2015.
It followed an outcry that British taxpayers' cash was being lavished on an increasingly well-off country with its own space programme and nuclear weapons, Daily Express reported Saturday.
The latest projections of India's GDP growth, by investment bank Goldman Sachs, prompted calls for the aid programme to be stopped forthwith.
Robert Oxley of the TaxPayers Alliance said: "Justine Greening rightly ended Britain's aid programme to India, but, given its economic performance, those projects should be brought to an end now, not in 2015. It is totally unacceptable."
IANS
First Published: Sunday, December 02, 2012, 00:00