Wolesi Jirga rejects mid-year draft budget

KABUL or lower house on Wednesday rejected the mid-year draft budget over unspecified funding sources for the presidential election, allocations for two new institutes and reduction in budget for 154 development projects.

Mohammad Azim Mohsini, head of the finance and budgetary commission of the Wolesi Jirga, presented information about the mid-year draft budget to lawmakers today.

He said the commission invited heads of 42 budgetary units for assessing the mid-year budget expenditure report.

In the beginning of the fiscal year, 399 billion afghanis were set aside as general and development expenses in the budget plan but an increase of 24.9 million afghanis had been made in the mid-year draft budget, he said.

He said there was 21.8 million afghanis increase in general budget and 3.86 million afghanis increase in development funds in the mid-year draft budget.

Mohsini said in the beginning of the year, 188 billion afghanis were considered to be collected from internal sources, but the amount was increased to 208 billion afghanis in the mid-year budget.

He said 199 billion afghanis were said to come from foreign sources to fund the budgetary allocations in the beginning of the year, but a 3.3 billion afghanis had been added to the amount in the new budget.

Except one commission, all other permanent commissions of the lower house rejected the draft budget, he said.

“In the mid-year draft budget, five departments have extra organizations while the development budget is reduced. The budget of some units is decreased without any coordination with them and more money is considered for the department of president’s protection and VIP figures,” he added.

The draft budget also considered funds for departments which have recently been created but the parliament was yet to approve that, he said.

“The funding sources of the presidential election are unspecified which is another reason the mid-year draft budget should be rejected,” he added.

A number of other lawmakers also said the draft budget had not been prepared according to the requirements of the country and demanded its rejection.

However, Zahid Hamdard, deputy finance minister who was present at today’s Wolesi Jirga session, said that money for some departments had been reduced due to inefficiency of some officials there.

He said officials of such departments had failed to spend their development budget over the last six months.

He said 1.6 billion afghanis were allocated for presidential election in the beginning of the year and the remaining 5.1 billion afghanis were added to the election budget in the mid-year plan.

About the newly created departments whose budgets are yet to be approved by the parliament, Hamdard said, “If you approve the mid-year budget plan, the Ministry of Finance will not provide budget to newly created units after the parliament approves them.”

However, Mir Rahman Rahmani, Wolesi Jirga speaker, said there were many problems in the mid-year draft budget and it needed a serious review. He put the draft budget for voting and a majority of lawmakers rejected it.

Rahmani asked the Ministry of Finance to bring changes to the draft budget as soon as possible and share it again with the Wolesi Jirga for approval.

mds/ma