Monday, January 7, 2008
All that international aid is mostly going to go to pay salaries and for food aid, not "renewable resources" as it were: What Palestinians will do with $7.4 billion
When donors met in Paris last month and awarded $7.4 billion in aid to the Palestinians, a larger-than-expected package to be distributed over the next three years, many in the international community showed a new readiness to support the new Israeli-Palestinian peace push and provide a safety net for it in the form of economic stability.
Now Palestinian and foreign observers alike are keen to see how and where the money is spent, putting senior officials on the spot with questions of how they intend to avoid the corruption and mismanagement that characterized the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the past...
...Samir Barghouthi, an economist who runs a Ramallah investment firm, says that of the amount of aid pledged, approximately 70 percent of the amount will go to public salaries and 30 percent will go to development projects, food relief, and assistance – especially to Gazans.
The biggest problem, he says, is indeed the bloated PA payroll. "There are many thousands of public sector employees who are not working. Some are living in Jordan or Egypt, some work from home, some work in the private sector but still take a salary from the government. There are people who are not even showing up in work because there isn't something to do," says Mr. Barghouthi.
He suggests the PA needs to push ahead with offering a retirement program, perhaps giving incentives by offering highly subsidized loans for people to start businesses.
"The Paris aid is just a mechanism to help people survive, which means after three years, when those monies are spent, we have to face the problem again, and in another three years," he says. "We should use this commitment to push for deep restructuring."
So while the West is sending money to Gaza: Palestinian health ministry accuses Hamas of looting Gaza Strip hospital's reserve fuel
The Palestinian health ministry of the Ramallah-based caretaker government said on Thursday that "Hamas militias" have looted the fuel stores destined for hospital vehicles in the Gaza Strip.
A statement released by the health ministry said that fuel from the European hospital in the Gaza Strip had been stolen by the director of the hospital drivers to supply the Hamas-affiliated Executive Force...
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: $7.4 billion Going Mostly to Delay Collapse - Hamas Loots Gaza Fuel.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/13933
Leave a comment to: $7.4 billion Going Mostly to Delay Collapse - Hamas Loots Gaza Fuel
Subscribe to This Thread Without Leaving a Comment
Comment Info and Policy:
1) You must have Javascript enabled in your browser in order to comment (blame the spammers). If you don't know what that is, you're probably fine.
2) HTML is on, so basic html should work. Raw links will be made auto-clickable, too, so even if you don't know html you can just paste in the link and it should work fine. Keep the "http://" in it.
3) Comments are generally unmoderated, which means I don't necessarily agree with the tone and tenor of everything posted. In fact, sometimes people post things they don't really mean just to make other people look bad. The internet is an anonymous place for the most part. That said...
4) I welcome you to post here. I'd love to have your input, agree, disagree or just offer a different data point, really. If I didn't want any participation, I'd turn off comments. Be aware, however, that this blog and the comments section exist for my entertainment. Therefore, I reserve ALL RIGHTS here, including the right to remove any or all comments on nothing more than a whim. Please don't even bother complaining. I'm the one providing the space and the free news and thought buffet. I don't owe anyone anything.
Anyone who posts here will be treated as my guest. That means I'm happy to be polite as a default, but if anyone is rude to the host they'll be unceremoniously shown the door.
It may pay to recall a famous line from the Tom Selleck magnum opus, Mr. Baseball: "Jack-san, you want Yoji's advice about the babes, you come to Yoji with respect."
5) Enjoy your stay!