You have announced roughly $1.5B of investments in Afghanistan. We have made $500M of investments in the same period. It remains to be seen who has the staying power in Afghanistan to continue to "plough capital into it".
BTW, is the money spent on constructing the extensive network of "consulates" and other facilities used by Indian - shall we say, "government employees" - part of this $1.5B?
Its fine if india is not able to stay in afg(though I doubt it). My point here was that despite all the detractions, India has moved away from being
helplessly dependent on aid (as in late 80's and early 90s) and is slowly moving into the zone of providing some financial help to its friendly nations.
On the destination of this financial help to Afghanistan, its not the expense of govt of India in Afg, but the money provided for development activities..For example..
In January 2009, India completed construction of the Zaranj-Delaram highway in southwest Afghanistan near the Iranian border; it is building Afghanistan's new parliament building set for completion by 2011; it is constructing the Salma Dam power project in Herat Province; and it has provided support in the areas of health, education, transportation, power, and telecommunications.
But I guess you already knew this and the statement was just to poke a little..
btw the $ 500 million you talked off is for the govt /people of Afg or the funding towards helping Afghan Taliban to overthrow the current govt??
I fail to see your point here. Historically, Pakistan has maintained a higher rate of growth than India. Even if you look at the WoT period from 2000-2007, we were growing at a very rapid 7+%. It is only the last 2 years that a slow down has occurred. One, mind you, that has already ended with increasing rates of growth being forecast by the IMF and others.
So what exactly is your point? Are you somehow contending that because Pakistan's economy hasn't grown very fast over just the last 2 years - for reasons that include a global downturn and a military operation on our western border - that this somehow indicates mismanagement of funds? What a bogus and ridiculous assertion.
No I am not contending that at all. The topic is on the amount of aid recvd. So if you open the links I provided in my post in response to Riaz, you will see that while the official development assistence to India went down by 15% (from 1.4 billion to 1.2 billion) between 2000 and 2008, The aid to pakistan went up by 300% (from 700 million to 2.2 billion) in the same period.. (Pl note this does not include military aid)
And while you mention the gdp growth of 7%, you can not ignore the GDP dampner called inflation rate which has been as high as 24% in Pakistan in certain years..
And the state of economy of pakistan today is fairly visible to all...
By that coin, India has been mismanaging aid, food assistance and other largess thrown its way for over 60 years! You want to use the last 2 years to justify a 63 year trend?
Not at all.. but then economy of India today is what it is and so is economy of pakistan for all to see..
As for our "neighbour's growth", I couldn't care less. Talk to me when you have a city in India that comes even remotely close to Islamabad. Or when you have a highway network like ours. Or when you can reduce begging and homelessness to the per-capita levels of Lahore. Until then, you can take your growth and enjoy it on your own...
It wasnt me who started contending that the growth of India is due to aid from rest of the world.. Think it was you..And if you try and highlight selective areas of affluence in Pakistan, then dont forget that india is 3rd in the world in terms of no of billionnairs.
And roads are not the only component of infrastructure. Will do you well to comapre the reach of Indian railway network to what you see in pakistan...Also do look up some of the recent World economic forum reports on both India and Pakistan to get a perspective..