I think that little aid is insignificant for Pakistan. Plus, these aids are soft loan and they need to be pay back in certain period of time. There is no free launch in the world. Plus the conditions are attached with these aid program. All projects are approved by one agency and hardly any role of govt in their.
Haider bhai sahib
it is not "aid", it never was. We are not Somalia or Sierra Leon that we need aid.
USA may be called Uncle Sam, but he is not our chacha or mama that it will give us free goodies.
It is unfortunate that so many Pakistanis goof up on this. But
You are not alone, even big name oxford graduate Pakistanis fail to understand the difference between aid and AID.
Bhai sahib
USA provides "AID" that is short of "Assistance for International development".
This "assistance is in return for Pakistani "assistance" to USA for its "international projects".
In other words this is a dollar aka hard currency payment to Pakistan for supporting and assisting USA.
This assistance comes as a large package of approximately $10-12 billion for any year that Pakistan "ACTIVELY" helps USA.
Some of it is direct cash around $2 to $3 billions
Some of it is soft loans $3-4 billion
The rest is a mix of trade and other cash payments to our military.
Considering our nation's total dollar income of $20-25 billion a year, USA assisstance is HUGE covering almost 50% of the dollar/euro portion.
Without our dollars/euros, we are dead in the middle of ocean, as we cannot pay for petrol, gas, food, chemicals, and military purchases.
So I urge you not to post such childish comments about dollar income.
Our rupee is worth a $hit (like every other developing country) so we have to have a minimum of $25 billion a year.
Zardari Gaddhari's problem or other politicians problem is that they cannot mobilize Pakistani masses to work for international trade and services.
And thus we gravely suffer during civilian rules.
During military rule, military generals can mobilize almost 1 million man Pak army/rangers/FC etc to do the work for international projects and thus bring home the badly needed dollars/euros.
Hope this helps you understand the dire economic situation of Pakistan.
Peace