Ahmad Wali Haqmal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Finance, did not say what the size of the proposed budget would be but said it was for December next year.
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| International donors cut off financial aid to Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in August this year, and Western powers, including the United States, froze billions of dollars of Kabul’s overseas assets abroad (AFP file) |
A Taliban government spokesman said on Friday that the Afghan Ministry of Finance had drafted a national budget that would not rely on foreign aid for the first time in two decades. On the other hand, the Taliban administration has also applied for Afghanistan’s seat in the United Nations.
The Taliban administration’s announcement comes at a time when the country is mired in economic crisis and is facing a humanitarian catastrophe that the United Nations has called an “avalanche of hunger.
Ahmad Wali Haqmal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Finance, did not say what the size of the proposed budget would be but said it was for December next year. The spokesman told the French news agency AFP that the budget would be sent to the cabinet for approval before it was released.
He told state television in an interview: We are trying to run the budget on our own revenue and we are confident that we can do it.
International donors have cut off financial aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in August this year, and Western powers, including the United States, have frozen billions of dollars of Kabul’s assets abroad.
The last budget of Ashraf Ghani’s government in 2021 was prepared under the guidance of IMF, which was facing a deficit despite the aid of 219 billion Afghanis (currently 2. 2.7 billion) and 217 billion Afghanis of national income.
At that time, the exchange rate was around 80 afghanis against the dollar, but after the return of the Taliban, the value of the local currency continued to fall, which had dropped to 130 last Monday, but by Friday it had returned to 100.
Hamal acknowledged that government employees had not been paid for several months. We are doing our best to pay the dues by the end of the year,” he said. However, he warned that a new pay scale has also been developed for employees.
The new government’s revenue department said last month that it had collected 26 billion afghanis in the past two and a half months, including 13 billion afghanis in customs duties. The department has also announced a new Islamic tax to fund relief schemes for the poor and orphans.
An Afghan economist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that “the new budget is likely to be only a quarter of the 2021 budget. The Taliban are saying that they have more transparency at the border crossings, ie more duty has been collected than before, but even if it is true, the maximum revenue will be only 100 billion afghanis because of severe recession will greatly reduce tax collection
The Taliban has also applied for a seat at the United Nations for Afghanistan. The Taliban’s appeal comes as the former US-backed Afghan government’s ambassador to the United States has resigned.
The UN seat and some other embassies abroad are held by exiled diplomats of the Ashraf Ghani government, while the new Taliban government wants to appoint its representatives there. No country in the world, including the United Nations, has recognized the Taliban government
UN Assistant Spokesman Farhan Haq told AFP that according to a letter received on Thursday, former government envoy Ghulam Ishaqzai had resigned from his post on December 15. Taliban nominee for the post, Sohail Shaheen, has said the seat should now be given to Afghanistan’s new government because it is a matter of credibility for the international community.
He said in a message on Twitter that a new independent government” was now in place in Afghanistan.
Taliban nominee for UN envoy Sohail Shaheen has previously served as deputy ambassador to Islamabad.
After the fall of the first Taliban government, he became the movement’s exiled spokesman and has been a popular figure in the foreign media due to his fluent English.
