david waker 
Taliban prepare new Afghan budget without foreign aid
The Ministry of Finance Afghanistan under the Taliban government has prepared a national budget design that, for the first time in two decades, funded without foreign assistance, said a spokesman.
It comes because the country is mired in the economic crisis and faces a humanitarian disaster that towered that the United Nations has been called “hunger avalanche”.
Ministry of Finance spokesman Ahmad Guardian Haqmal did not disclose the size of the budget design – which runs up to 2022 December – but to AFP will go to the cabinet for approval before being published.
“We try to finance it from our domestic income – and we believe we can,” he told government television in an interview distributed on Twitter.
Global donors suspended financial assistance when the Taliban seized power in August and Western forces also freeze access to billions of dollars in assets held abroad.
Budget 2021, put together by the previous administration under the IMF guidance, projected a deficit despite 219 billion Afghanistan ($ 2.7 billion at the time) in assistance and grants and 217 billion of domestic income.
At that time, the exchange rate was around 80 afghanistic with the dollar, but the local currency was hammered since the return of the Taliban, especially in the past week, slumped up to 130 on Monday before recovering to around 100.
The new government revenue department said last month that he had collected 26 billion Afghanists in two and a half months earlier, including 13 billion in customs. It also announces new Islamic taxes to fund aid projects for poor people and orphans.
Afghan economists who requested not to be named said on Friday, the new budget would likely end only a quarter of it for 2021.
Taliban said they had more transparency at the border intersection,” meaning fewer goods avoided tasks than before, these economists told AFP.
But, he said, even if it was true, maximum income would only be around 100 billion Afghanistan because the intensive recession would shrink much greater tax.
