Parliament approves budget

The budget document for the fiscal year 1399, Persian calendar, was finally approved on Wednesday by 101 votes by and 45 votes against in the Afghan parliament.

The Afghan parliament’s financial and budget commission banned the Afghan government from channelling money to the emergency code-91.

The lower house included the budget document in their agenda on Wednesday to clarify its status.

Some of the MPs prevented the Financial and Budget Commission to report the budget because of the imbalance in the developmental projects, and criticized the performance of the commission,

Sayed Zahir Masroor, the Balkh MP said in the matter, “at the beginning of the legislative year, the financial and budget commission didn’t act nationally, and that’s why many complaints were raised towards the budget plan.”

However, the financial and budget commission underlined that no treason has been made by the commission as they have sent all the suggestions of the MPs to the ministry of finance in written.

“More than 700 suggestions have been sent to the Ministry of Finance, and they have the authority to bring amendments in the budget draft as they may,” said Mohammad Azim Mohseni, chair of the commission.

This comes as, besides many complaints, the budget draft was put to vote, and it was approved winning more than 69% of the votes.

The other concern of the lower house was channelling money from and to code-91 on which the parliament finally took away the government’s authority.

The financial and budget commission further added that only 11 new developmental projects were added to the budget document, and more than 500 projects were ordinary projects.

Mir Rahman Rahmani, the speaker of the lower house, underscored that the national budget document includes more than 428 billion AFN, out of which more than 289 billion AFN is dedicated to ordinary projects, and more than 139 billion AFN is dedicated to the developmental projects.

Approving the national budget, the MPs want the government administrations to spend the budget legally, or else, they will have to stand accountable to the house.