Thursday, January 13, 2005

So, how much did Saudi give?

It bothers me the fact that Saudi Arabia didn't react until Dec 29th and give $10M donation to tsunami's victims. I mean lots of their foreign workers come from countries affected by the tsunami: Bangladesh, Srilanka, Thailand, and Indonesia to name a few. Therefore I was expecting a speedy reaction from Saudi's government. After all without those cheap foreign workers what would happened to Saudi daily life?

I should also point out that the tsunami occurred on Sunday. Sunday is the day where while rest of the world are not working, those people in middle east are actually on working day! But no, they had to wait until Dec 29th, while Israel and other countries shipped their aid as early as on the 27th.

Thankfully, Saudi's people have more compassion than their government and collected an impressive $82M during a telethon, which is about $5.4 per citizen in absolute terms. Remember, not everyone in Saudi is a billionaire, in fact Saudi's percapita income is about $8500 per year according to Atlas method.

Then, I stumbled across this article on Indonesian newspaper citing that Saudi gave $800M in cash and materials (food & tools). While on Saudi Arabia information Resource there's no such information other than the Saudi'S people and government raised more than $100M from a telethon, Saudi government pledged $30M, and Saudi's petroleum company Aramco gave $2M.

I wonder how do they come up with $800M? Do they add relief packeged from Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank of $500M to Saudi's donation?

So, how much did Saudi actually give?

No comments: