Some members of Herat Provincial Council said the local budgetary units have not spent an adequate percentage of their development budget and that they are not given a clear statistics in this respect.

According Herat officials, the local budgetary units have spent almost 99 percent of their development budget for the last fiscal year.

However, deputy head of the Herat Provincial Council, Naqibullah Mohibi, said some projects under the development budget have remained incomplete. 

“You see most of our development projects in Herat have remained incomplete. This year also, the impacts of development budget spending is not remarkable,” Mohibi said. 

“Majority of the budget which was allocated to Herat this year has been invested in the province in collaboration with ministries,” said Mahayuddin Noori, acting governor of Herat.

A number of civil society activists said the development budget in the province has not been spent in an effective way.

“Information of local government about the spending of the development budget is not correct. There are lots of problems and the budget spending in the last fiscal year was very high,” said Sayed Ashraf Sadat, a civil society activist in Herat. 

This comes after the Ministry of Finance said on December 19 that the balance of development budget spending by government’s budgetary units has surpassed almost 90 percent this year, which shows a 23 percent increase compared to the same period a year ago.

The Finance Ministry has allocated AFs 399 billion for the 1398 fiscal year’s budget, 69 percent of which has been allocated for the standard budget while the remaining 39 percent has been allocated for the development budget.

According to the ministry, from the AFs 399 billion, AFs 275 billion will be allocated to the standard budget and the remainder will be put aside for the development budget.