KABUL (Pajhwok): In response to an urgent request from Kabul, Japan on Wednesday pledged to provide approximately $20 million or 11.4 billion afs under the Non-Project Grant Aid.
A statement from the Embassy of Japan said Wednesday that the exchange of note for this Non- Project Grant Aid signed between Hiroshi Takahashi, ambassador of Japan to Afghanistan and Atiqullah Atifmal, acting minister of foreign affairs of Afghanistan.
The amount which provided through this Aid would contribute to ease the governmental financial gap, namely the balance between revenue and its expenditure, for the time being, so that the government could continue its duty to serve Afghan people, it added.
In addition, this aid would be a quick remedy for the Afghan government and its economy. This Non-project Grant Aid scheme has also unique aspect of the development.
In the signing ceremony, Ambassador Takahashi emphasized as follows that “I strongly urge that the national unity government of Afghanistan will take the necessary reforms and fight against corruption in order to utilize the financial and human resources more effectively, to raise its revenue, and to secure proper implementation of the assistance by the international donor.”
He said that he would like to express the strong support to the commitment showed by the government of Afghanistan in the late London Conference on Afghanistan.
The provided fund would be used by the government of Afghanistan to procure the necessary items abroad, such as fuels. These items would be sold by the government at the favourable price to the domestic market, and it allows the government to get certain amount of the revenues.
This unique scheme request the government of Afghanistan to save the certain portion of the revenue in “Counterpart Fund Account” and it will be utilized for the development project under the close consultation with the Embassy of Japan.
This Non-project Grant Aid scheme started in 2002, and the total amount of around $282.5 million in current exchange rate, was provided by government of Japan in this scheme. Various development projects had been implemented by the Counterpart fund so far. For this year, both governments decide to further projects including the training of officials of the government, improvement of roads in local city and the national football stadium.
Japan has been assisting Afghanistan’s nation-building efforts in various fields including security, health, infrastructure and its capacity development.
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