India Provides $7 Billion As Credit and Rs 68k Cr As Grants and Aid to Global South

Chennai: India has provided over $7 billion finance are credit and concessional finance and more than Rs 43,000 crore as grants to overseas projects in the past five years. Further Rs 25,396 crore has been provided to countries as aid.

The government has provided development assistance to the Global South through Lines of Credit (LoC), Concessional Finance Scheme (CFS), and Grant-in-Aid projects. The projects undertaken cover a wide range of sectors such as water, power, railways, roads, agriculture, education and healthcare, the government informed the Rajya Sabha.

Of this, the government has provided Rs 43,026 crore for 38 projects as grants-in-aid. Bhutan received the highest grant of Rs 32,877 crore for seven projects. Other countries, which have received grants for projects are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

A total of $5894 million has been offered to overseas projects as credit. Around $1692 million provided to Mongolia for the construction of a crude oil refinery is the largest funding. The Infrastructure Development for Power Evacuation Facilities for Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh received $1016 million.

Under the Concessional Finance Scheme Maitree Super Thermal power plant in Bangladesh has received $1600 million.

Further, the government has provided aid to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Mauritius and some of the African countries. Of the Rs 25,396 crore provided to these countries in five years, Rs 3784 crore has been provided in FY24. In FY20, the total aid was Rs 6884 crore, Rs 5199 crore in FY21, Rs 4576 crore in FY22 and Rs 4953 crore in FY23. Of this, Rs 9595 crore was provided to Bhutan in the past five years.