Minister
of Economy of Afghanistan: What do you think about foreign aid for
Afghanistan, is that useful for Afghanistan?
Economic
Adviser for Afghanistan: Well, if I am supposed to answer that
question, I will answer it in two parts “Has the Foreign Aid been effective for
Afghanistan so far or not?” and also “Is it possible to make it more useful and
effective in future or not?”
The idea of “Foreign Aid” looks as
a very nice and a very useful idea but its’ effectiveness depends on the
situation of every country. Some countries in the past could manage it in the
best useful ways but some countries could not. When we talk about Foreign Aid,
you should remember that there is nothing such as a “Free Lunch” in economics.
Every single unit of a currency buys something, you should find out what?
Afghanistan could not use Foreign Aid effectively due to
different internal and external factors.
Minister of Economy of
Afghanistan: What are those internal and external factors?
Economic Adviser for Afghanistan:
These factors are many and to
know all of it precisely, we need to conduct an extensive research but I
can tell you only few that I can remember.
Internal factors are:
- Weak management / or lack of modern management in the different managerial levels such as in private sector in firm level, industry level as well as in different hierarchy of positions inside financial and economic institutions and businesses. This weak management / or lack of management was also visible to a great extent in the public sector and government agencies.
- Widespread corruption at all levels.
- Nepotism.
- Personal interests and tribal interests.
- Culture of “None of my business” at all levels.
- Low capacity and lack of professionalism.
- Lack of Afghan strategic planners.
- Lack of transparency and monitoring of implementing organizations.
- Lack of national and international measures, standards and indicators to measure the outcome of the projects.
The external factors are:
Donors’ “will” and intentions. They mostly support short
term and ineffective projects and do not give the responsibility and decision
making authority of spending Foreign Aid to Afghans.
Widespread corruption inside donor organizations.
Lack of transparency and monitoring of donor organizations.
Foreign Aid to Afghanistan has changed into personal
businesses of different donor organizations.
Minister of Economy of
Afghanistan: What are the positive and negative impacts of foreign
aid for Afghanistan?
Economic Adviser for Afghanistan:
To answer that question will also require conducting a research on
different implemented projects in Afghanistan but I can only tell you what I
can remember and that is not enough.
Positive impacts:
- To rehabilitate some small parts of infrastructure like paved roads / streets with very low quality of one year durability and low standards without any traffic lights or traffic sings.
- To make a very weak and unsustainable police and national army who cannot defeat Taliban and not get defeated by the Taliban and who will disappear after foreign aid stops.
- Bringing a new economic system “market economy” and a new political system for Afghanistan which both of them are too big in size for Afghanistan and do not match the local reality and facts of Afghanistan.
Negative impacts:
- Increased dependence on foreign aid.
- Decreased level of sovereignty and independence.
- Increased level of corruption.
- Decreased level of sustainability of both economic and political systems due to an increase in price of human capital (human resources).
- Lack of a unified development program with specific and measureable goals for each sector so that the results could be measured at any time.
- Increased levels of insecurity and suicide attacks inside the country.
- Increased level of Pakistan influence in Afghanistan.
- Lack of good governance.
- Disappointments and lack of hopes for the population of Afghanistan and fear of an uncertain future.
- Increased level of immigration and loss of human capital.
- Intensified tribalism due to supporting the wrong guys in political sphere.
- Extended miserable living conditions for the whole population of Afghanistan who already suffered a half century of war and distress.
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