KABUL, April 3: Afghanistan’s finance minister announced on Sunday a 4.75 billion dollar budget for 2005 to be funded mostly by international donors. Some 93 per cent of total budget will come from international assistance, of which more than three-quarters will go to development projects to be directly managed by donors, Finance Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady said.

The Afghan government is only committing 333 million dollars to the budget, he said.

“With government budget, we can only pay wages and finance existing programmes, because most of international aid is managed by the international community itself, and we cannot control it,” said Adib Farhadi, director for development services with the Ministry of Reconstruction.

The budget was announced a day before the opening of a development forum in the capital Kabul to discuss the distribution of international assistance for the country, devastated by decades of war and now battling an insurgency carried out in part by members of the ousted Taliban regime.

The forum comes as the Afghan government presses for more control over its own budget.

“With this forum, we have the opportunity to tell the world that although there are still important humanitarian needs, we, Afghans, would like to participate more in the reconstruction of our country,” Farhadi said.

—AFP