Government urged to expedite debts payment process

KABUL (Pajhwok): The association of companies and investors of Afghanistan has called on the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to pay their debts as soon as possible.

The association of companies held a meeting about the “15 percent of their debts payments, savings and guarantees of companies, the commitment of World Bank and the frozen assets of the National Bank of Afghanistan”.

Head of the association Mohammad Baz Ghairat, said politics and economy were interlinked, neither politics nor economics could grow alone.

Ghairat said global super powers managed politics and economics together, so Afghanistan must also follow such policy. He clarified that the association wanted to provide services to people in which the cooperation of the government was needed.

He said the government owed 185 billion afghans to different companies, so far it had paid 850 million afs to companies and the remaining debts of some big companies were yet to be paid.

“The process of debts repayment is going slowly but the government is trying to speed up this process,” he added.

Ghairat added: “The regulation of debts repayment was approved about three years ago and a mechanism was also adopted, a committee has been assigned to address the issue of debts. The committee has decided to pay 10 percent of the debts in 2023, but its time was too short which could not pay all the debts of the fiscal year. The Ministry of Finance charged us 15 percent tax.”

He called on the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to pay the 15 percent approved debts as soon as possible to add the money to their cycle of their economies and reduce unemployment.

By issuing a resolution, the associations wrote, based on a decree of the supreme leader of the IEA, only a limited number of companies had received the 10 percent debt of 2023, and 15 percent of 2024 debts repayment by the government. They urged the government to include the big companies to this order and implement the decree completely.

The companies representatives wrote in their resolution, based on the instruction of the National Bank of Afghanistan, freezing companies guarantee cash in private banks is a blow to companies which eventually affects trade and investors.

According this resolution, they are summoned by judicial officials and international companies that are directly and indirectly involved in funding the projects, so the government must take practical steps regarding the half-completed projects.

On October 7^th, the Ministry of Finance announced that it had paid the remaining 850 million Afs debts of a number of domestic companies.

The ministry said right now the process of establishing and implementing claims, guarantees and savings of companies was going on normally.

aw/ma