Afghanistan Public Expenditure Review 2010 : Second Generation of Public Expenditure Reforms
Afghanistan and its donor community face a dilemma that is critical to the country's sustained development: how to channel more foreign assistance through the government's budgetary system (i.e., core budget) in the face of a huge capacit...
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Format: | Public Expenditure Review |
Language: | English |
Published: |
World Bank
2012
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Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000333037_20100611004136 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2864 |
Summary: | Afghanistan and its donor community face
a dilemma that is critical to the country's sustained
development: how to channel more foreign assistance through
the government's budgetary system (i.e., core budget)
in the face of a huge capacity gap to ensure effective
administration of such expenditures. Without more money on
budget, national objectives such as poverty reduction and
the building of a stable state cannot be fully realized.
Currently, 90 percent of the national budget' is
externally financed. Overall aid in 2008-09 amounted to
US$5.5 billion or 47 percent of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP). The critical issue, however, is not so much the
amount of aid, but weaknesses in its mode of delivery and
impact. Three quarters of the aid bypasses the
government's own budget system, moving through what is
known as the 'external budget'. This dual
budgetary system means that most economic activity in
Afghanistan takes place outside the government's fiscal
control, thus undermining the government's legitimacy
and relevance to the Afghan people and weakening the
budget's primacy as the tool of national policy. The
aid needs to be on-budget and aligned with Afghan
priorities. If the success of aid can be gauged by the
extent to which it enables a recipient country to free
itself of the need for that aid, then the Afghanistan
foreign assistance program, as currently structured, is
failing its mission. Afghanistan's fiscal
sustainability, after having risen to a plateau in recent
years, regressed in 2008-09 due to rising operating
expenditures, mainly for security, and the country remains
one of the world's most aid-dependent. |
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