Documents seen by TOLOnews show that at least 23 government institutions have spent less than 10 percent of their development budget in the first six months of the financial year.

Six to seven institutions have not even touched their development budget so far.

Based on the documents, institutions such the Ministry of Defense (MoD), High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption, State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, the Senate, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) and Central Statistics Organization (CSO) are among the institutions who have failed to touch their development budget.

“You are aware that last year we spent the majority of the budget, this year we will spend most of our budget,” said MoD spokesman Dawlat Waziri.

“All of our budget would be focused on two construction projects, the design and procurement process of them have been completed and we will spend our entire development budget on it,” said Bilal Sediqqi, spokesman for the AIHRC.

“This year there is no development budget allocated to us, they did not allocate us money despite our requests,” said Sayed Ghulam Hussain Fakhri, the head of the high office of oversight and anti-corruption.

Meanwhile, a number of lawmakers in parliament have said the failure to spend development budgets by government institutions was concerning.

“The failure to spend the budget is a matter of grave concern, because it means that jobs are not created for the people and development projects are halted,” said MP Sadiqizada Neeli.

“If they have spent only 15 percent in the first six months, they would fail to spend more than 15 percent in the next six months,” said MP Khair Mohammad Aimaq.

Economic analysts say that the lack of comprehensive policies for the implementation of development projects and the intervention of lawmakers and the lack of monitoring have been obstacles in the way of budget spending.

“The lack of planning hinders spending of the development budget,” said economic analyst Sayed Massoud.

“We have worked on the solutions, we also worked on the monitoring sytem including the allocations,” said Ajmal Hamid Abdul Rahimzai, spokesman for the ministry of finance.