82% of aid spent by the international community itself: Zakhilwal

KABUL - Afghanistan has only received $57 billion out of $69 billion committed by the International Community to the country, finance minister said on Saturday.
Finance Minister, Omar Zakhilwal, told a news conference that only 18 percent of the whole $57 billion that has been flowed into Afghanistan as part of international community's grant to the country has been spent through the government budget.
And the remaining 82 percent of the funding aid has been spent by the international community itself, he added.
The United States, Japan and European Union have been the biggest donors of Afghanistan, ministry of finance said.

Officials in ministry of finance said that the International Community began providing funding grants to Afghanistan in 2002.
Of all 51 percent of the aid has been spent on security programs and the rest 41 percent has been spent on road construction, agriculture, solidarity programs, power supply, reconstruction of airports and some other sectors, officials said.

Finance Minister Hazrat-e-Omar Zakhilwal said: "of $57 billion funding aid to Afghanistan, 18 percent has been spent through Afghanistan's national budget and the rest 82 percent has been spent directly by them."

Mr Zakhilwal said that talks are in progress with the International Monetary Fund to channel much of the fund through the government budget.

"We are still negotiating with the IMF so that we could much of the spending this year, but we need to come up with a good result in talks with IMF and we hope this could be wrapped up in a month or two," he said.

According to the ministry of finance, the number of projects that have been implemented by donor countries is twice bigger in number compared to projects implemented by the government. (Tolo News)