Parliament approves 2020 fiscal year’s budget

Monitoring Desk

KABUL: The Afghan parliament on Wednesday approved the coming fiscal year’s budget plan. It gained a majority of votes just ahead of the winter recess.

The budget totals 428 billion Afghanis, with 289 billion Afghanis allocated for the “ordinary” budget and 139 billion Afghanis for development.

The budget plan was previously rejected by the MPs who asked the Finance Ministry to bring balance and changes in the development and ordinary budget.

The Kabul-based monitoring organization, Integrity Watch Afghanistan, in a new report on the national budget, determined that sufficient funds have not been allocated for two key sectors — education and health.

The report shows an overall increase in revenue and budget execution, but also highlights that the immediate needs of the people, including the many returnees and internally displaced people, have not been reflected in the proposed budget.

The report claims that the allocated budgets for the important sectors of health and education have decreased compared to the previous year’s despite the government’s promise to increase construction of schools.

Nonetheless, the government has outperformed the previous government in terms of budget execution and revenue collection: figures show a 9% increase in revenue and a 24% increase in budget execution.

In 2018, the government promised to build 6000 schools in two years, but now the government says that it will only be able to build 800 schools by the spring of 2020.

The report also highlights the fact that the Afghan government has allocated only $1.20 for each returnee and internally displaced person, a very small amount of money compared to the number of returnees, Timory added.(TOLOnews)