UK gave aid cash to Indian TV chef

‘Helped build cookware brand’

TENS of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash has been poured through foreign aid into a celebrity chef’s cookware brand, coffee shops and luxury hotels.

Wonderchef, which was co-founded by Sanjeev Kapoor, received an investment to help with ‘brand building’.

The Mumbai-based kitchen appliances and cookware maker is also building an integrated factory and warehouse.

The funding was made available through CDC, the Government’s investment arm that received £955million of foreign aid last year. In Kenya, CDC invested in Java House, which runs a chain of coffee shops, as well as outlets selling frozen yoghurt and artisanal pizza. It sold its stake earlier this year.

Onomo, a chain of hotels for business travellers in Africa, received a £42million investment in 2017. CDC also has a stake in Azalai, which owns six hotels with three to five stars in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Benin. Ministers have claimed that money invested in businesses throughout the world by CDC helps create jobs. Almost £2.1billion of the foreign aid budget has been allocated to CDC in the past three years. But a report by the National Audit Office four years ago found it was struggling to show that its work was making a lasting impact on people’s lives in poor countries.

CDC uses its money to take stakes in businesses around the world.

After a period of time it can sell off its portion of the firms and re-invest the cash elsewhere. A CDC spokesman said: ‘Every single investment we now make is subject to a comprehensive and systematic assessment of its expected impact.’

They said the highlighted examples, which form part of a portfolio of more than 1,200 investments, ‘have all created vital skilled jobs, supported valuable services that bolster wider economic growth and delivered tax revenue for the countries in question’.

A Dfid spokesman said: ‘The UK, through its commitment to CDC, is supporting companies, which are boosting the economies of some of the world’s poorest countries. The businesses CDC invests in directly employ over 875,000 workers in Africa and South Asia and support more than six million jobs.’