Pakistan received $125.7 million external assistance during the first quarter of the current fiscal year including $41.2 million from multilaterals while $84.3 million was received from bilateral donors. The documents available with this scribe showed that two multilateral donors, the World Bank and Islamic Development Bank disbursed $35 million and $6.2 million respectively in the first quarter of 2012-13.
UK Department for International Development (DFID) remained the major bilateral donor from July 2012 to date by disbursing $32.4 million to Pakistan, Japan released $23.6 million and US has remained the third major bilateral donor so far by releasing $13.6 million to Pakistan.
Australia released $5.8 million through Australian Agency for International Development (AUSAID), EU released $3.74 million through European Commission' Humanitarian Aid Office, UN $0.9 million through Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UNDP, Norway $2.4 million, Netherlands $0.98 million, Germany $0.55 million and $0.14 million were disbursed by Global Environment Facility (GEF).
Sources told Business Recorder here on Monday that "multilateral donors provide assistance at tougher terms and conditions compared to the bilaterals. Financial support being provided by the bilaterals is based mostly on grants not loans but Pakistan is still dependent heavily on foreign assistance provided by the multilateral donors".
"In the absence of the Letter of Comfort (LoC) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Pakistan has, unfortunately, been deprived of financial commitments made by the multilateral donors including Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank that may lead to a considerable shortfall in the target of Rs 386.9 billion set for foreign assistance in 2012-13. The country was unsuccessful in achieving the target of $4.5 billion of foreign assistance set for last financial year 2011-12 and received just 1.4 billion dollars", sources added.
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