as percentages of GDP The table below examines the amounts pledged for humanitarian efforts in light of rough national economic power, which is arguably a more useful measure. There are a number of caveats that should be kept in mind while reading the table: The figures do not include the cost of operating military resources deployed to provide aid, and it is unclear how this should be quantified. While some would argue that military resources are already paid for and that the relief effort can be regarded as a logistics training exercise, the increased operational costs are an unbudgeted expenditure. Others would argue that the military resources provide the only infrastructure that will deliver aid in a timely manner to save lives to the hardest hit and neediest areas, and without this quickly deployable infrastructure the other contributions, no matter how large would be useless or arrive too late. The figures do not tell anything about the rate in which the money will be spent. How much of the money is going to be spent this year and how much is reserved for long-term reconstructions efforts is not reflected by this table. Use of gross domestic product or gross national product should be treated with caution as this does not accurately measure a country's ability to provide aid. Similarly, whether to use 'nominal' or 'real' GNP/GDPs can be argued. Some GDP/GNP figures are also out of date e.g. for the year 2002, or even 2001, so comparisons between countries may not be for the same time period. A better comparison might be used by examining purchasing power parity-adjusted GDP/GNP figures (as used in the CIA factbook). It can be argued, the quality of aid differs as "aid" is an ambiguous term that may cover a wide variety of methods, including 'soft' loans (where the money has to be repaid with interest albeit at below market rates), and 'tied aid' (where the money has to be spent buying goods and services from the donating country). The terms by which the aid is accepted play a large role in determining how useful it is and also affect the relative cost to the donating country. This is aid for one particular disaster. Without knowing how much aid the various countries and their people donate to other disasters, one cannot draw conclusions on their overall level of generosity. The numbers below are the pledged