KABUL: The Afghan Ministry of Finance under the new Taliban government has prepared a national budget design that, for the first time in two decades, funded without foreign assistance, said a spokesman.
It comes because the country is mired in the economic crisis and facing a rising humanitarian disaster, the United Nations has been called “hunger avalanche”.
Ministry of Finance spokesman Ahmad Guardian Haqmal did not disclose the size of the budget design – which runs up to 2022 December – but to AFP will go to the cabinet for approval before being published.
“We try to finish it from our domestic income – and we believe we can,” he previously told state television in an interview distributed on Twitter.
Global donors suspended financial assistance when the Taliban seized power in August and Western forces also freeze access to billions of dollars in assets held abroad.
Budget 2021, united by the previous administration under the guidance of the IMF, projected a deficit despite 219 billion Afghanistan in assistance and grants and 217 billion of domestic income.
At that time the exchange rate was around 80 Afghanistan with the dollar, but the local currency had been hammered since the return of the Taliban, especially in the past week, slumped up to 130 on Monday before recovering Friday to around 100.
Haqmal accepted that Haqmal accepted that it still owed a few months wages , by saying “we tried our best” to make items late at the end of the year.
But he warned, the new salary scale has also been prepared.