Under the plan approved today, Japanese economic assistance would total more than $50 billion from 1988 to 1992.

Direct military assistance totaled another $800 million for the same period; continuing at the rate of $25 and $55 million per year.

A State Department spokesman said American military assistance to Haiti in the latest fiscal year totaled $1.2 million.

Last year official Japanese assistance to South Africa totalled only 6.6 million dollars.

American officials include this fund in their calculations that assistance totals $24 billion.

Russian officials sometimes say that assistance only totals $1 billion because they only count grants and do not include loans that must eventually be repaid.

It said financial assistance to the bank would total 300 billion yen, or $2.4 billion.

According to official American sources, the assistance provided annually to the insurgents when the Soviet-Afghan war was at its height, totalled nearly $1.5bn.

The external financial assistance totalled approximately USD 165 million between 1993 and 2009.

Altogether, the assistance, taxes and fiscal self-control totaled enough to close a seemingly catastrophic budget gap.