Idiom: "He who pays the piper calls the tune."
Definition: This idiom is used to say that the person who pays for something controls how it is done.
It seems the whole concept of per capita has been foregone in rush to prove some particular angle of a "gravy train" counter.
I suppose Brazil and Turkey are more gravy train reliant than....Somalia by this "comprehensive" process and logic.
Not to mention the dimension of military aid, not counted in specific ODA slivers like "DAC".
Not to mention what aid flow %'s even are w.r.t total dollar flows (concerning things like investment and trade)....between countries, both in total and per capita levels.
Not to mention what the stark final reality of dependence on loans and bailouts are in the end for the govt/elite as a whole....given their "Success" in balancing and hedging and expanding these % components listed above.
Regarding this last bit, I have noticed over time just how the DHA has psychologically impressed on the larger elitist/patrician/neo-patrician/aspirer classes in Pakistan (who are a tiny % in the end but with inevitably the biggest bullhorns like anywhere else).
i.e It is the DHA that are quite unique (w.r.t neighbourhood and rest of world) to the particular peculiar nature of the bullhorning dissemination.
Hence with World Bank and IMF bailouts, there are immediate tropes trotted out about zionist usury etc etc....the kind of thing the Pak FM goes on CNN to express so delicately and thoughtfully like only the DHA-type can.
i.e conspiracies and narratives of everyone else being the root of Pakistan's problems regarding basic finances.
But when the same thing pops up with the newer red-front patron (restructuring of any CPEC loan condition or phase 2 negotiation/extraction etc), even Pakistanis regular people (the teeming masses) are all thrown under the bus if needed to carry water for all of that....no matter how brazen it is....or what level of failure (regarding the sustainable finance of it long term) it will most likely be.
PMIK is just another lackey in the DHA web and process. Thus you will see the foibles play out with him (pay up or else) from a system of its peculiar realised stature...regarding the few (overused and atrophied) cards and levers at its disposal that it has grown mightily dependent on anyway.
The rest of the world know this all too well.....it is why they all go about doing what they do dealing with the DHA on the same continued overall basis of what the grovelling and threats get in the bowl DHA extends out (by enforced reality that makes it past the insularity they have developed internally).