Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Half of Development Budget not Spent Again this Year

The trend of government agencies not being able to spend what they should seems to have turned into a chronic disease from which the government finds no cure. As in previous years when various agencies of the government of Afghanistan could not spend more than half of the development budget, this year too various government agencies continue to sit on a pile of money while poverty rages on and lack of development projects adds fuel to the fire in the country.

The fiscal year in Afghanistan matches the solar calendar and based on this, the current fiscal year would be out in less than 70 days while the development budget allocated for various ministries and agencies, which totals only $2 billion, is not even half-spent.

Afghanistan Parliamentary Assistance Project (APAP) has announced that only seven government institutions, most of them ministries, have been able to use more than 50% of their respective development budgets for the fiscal year 1390. Another five government agencies have been able to spend only 34% of their allocated development budgets.

What is interesting is that the entire government development budget for the fiscal year 1390, being only $2 billion, is a relatively small figure and the government, even after ten years, does not have the capacity to spend this figure.

For a country wherein poverty and under-development (or to be precise, lack of development) continue to feed into a vicious cycle of poverty, war and violence, and where the government and its various ministries and agencies have been at the receiving end of a decade of generous international assistance, not spending even a modest sum of $2 billion on desperately-needed development can have absolutely no excuse.

The incapacity of government agencies to plan, devise and implement small-to-medium developmental projects clearly shows the pervasive mismanagement, disarray and lack of any vision and sense of initiative within the government. The government of Afghanistan has consistently pressed the international community and foreign donors to channel most of the incoming aid through its ministries and agencies.

It has always raised much hue and cry when the donors have pledged support to the non-governmental sector. In the previous London Conference on Afghanistan, The government of Afghanistan, voraciously, secured the approval of foreign donors to receive 50% of the incoming funds.

While this volume of aid reaches to more than 3 billion a year, the government is unable to spend its own share of $2 billion. The government needs to take effective steps to increase capacities to spend the development budgets.