Foreign Aid
The West Bank and Gaza economies have become heavily reliant on foreign aid which stood at 1.8 billion in 2008. Approximately 30% of the GDP, or US$487 per Palestinian per year is aid. Foreign aid provides essential services for nearly half of the Palestinian people, and allows the Palestinian Authority to operate and pay its estimated 140,000 employees.
In 2010, Arab states cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. According to the Palestinian Finance Ministry, the PA received $583.5 million in budget support by August 2010, of which only 22 percent came from Arab states. The remainder was from international donors, including the European Union and the United States. Salah Rafat, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, urged the Arab countries to honor their financial pledges.
In April 2011, Salam Fayyad met with Western donors in Brussels and requested $5 billion in aid.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of The Palestinian Territories
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or aid:
“I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Technological innovation has done great damage ... to eating habits. Food is now available in such unpleasant forms that one frequently finds smoking between courses to be an aid to digestion.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)