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

Responsibilities to Cause Major Financial Challenges: Zakhilwal

Responsibilities to Cause Major Financial  Challenges: Zakhilwal

KABUL - Afghanistan will face major financial challenges after 2014, the Afghan Minister of Finance said on Sunday while speaking before the Afghan House of Representatives.
Presenting next year's budget to the House of Representatives, Afghan Minister of Finance Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal said that as the Afghans are taking over responsibilities, it will cause a major challenge for Afghan government beyond 2014.

He emphasized that the Afghan government will not have enough financial resources to carry on without international support.
"With all these achievements, we will face some major challenges," Mr Zakhiwal said. "The transition process can give Afghans more responsibility but it will cause major financial challenges."
The total budget for next year is estimated Afs 224.5 billions.

The normal annual budget for Afghanistan will be Afs134.3 billion.
Nearly 77.3 billion Afs will be earned through Afghan government incomes and more than 56.9 billion Afs will be provided by international community.

The development budget of the country is estimated 9.2 billion Afs.
The total revenues from the national resources are estimated 87.9 billion Afs for the next solar year.

The total cut for the main budget will be 12.5 billion Afs, Mr Zakhilwal added.
Lack of professional personnel is another challenge cited by the finance ministry.

His comment comes as The US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Saturday urged the international community to help pay for strong Afghan security troops despite worldwide economic pressure.
US is spending around $12 billion a year to train the Afghan security troops, which is expected to rise to 352,000 men to take over security when NATO combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014.

The United States has predicted that the annual price tag of training and equipping Afghan security forces in coming years will be around $6 billion.
The US wants the international community to contribute $1 billion per year after 2014 in addition to the United States' assistance.

Meanwhile, the British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond has said that NATO ministers would consider two critical questions: "What should be the long term size of the Afghan security forces and how are we going to share the cost of supporting that between different members of the international community. Those are discussions we have started here and we will continue at Chicago." (Tolo News)