Development forum sets priorities for billions pledged in Berlin

Delegates from more that 40 international organisations participated in a two-day conference organised by the Afghanistan Development Forum (ADF) in the capital Kabul on Tuesday. Chaired by the government, the meeting discussed the financial implications of the nation's development priorities and how donor money can be best utilised. According to officials, the conference's priority is to hammer out a strategy for the US $8.2 billion that was pledged at a donor conference in Berlin in early April. "The challenge now for us to create the institutions and the capacity that would enable our people to come out of poverty and live in security," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the conference. Karzai said his government had worked out a budget for the billions pledged that would boost security, accelerate the demobilisation of hundreds of private militias and combat the flourishing opium trade his country has become infamous for propagating. "I have instructed the Development Budget Committee to focus on translation of the work programme into specific deliverables during this year's budget," the Afghan president underlined. The Afghan government announced new development programmes at the meeting. "There are some new programmes including the National Agriculture Programme, National Accountability and Rule of Law Programme, the National Private Sector Support Programme and the National Skills Development Programme that will be addressed in these two days," Nazir Ahmad Shahidi, Afghan deputy minister of reconstruction, told IRIN at the ADF conference on Tuesday. Earlier this month, Afghanistan presented a vision of a peaceful, economically viable nation at the Berlin conference. Officials said that within a decade, the country would no longer be an international burden if the war ravaged country had access to $27 billion in assistance funding over the next 10 years. A major complaint from Kabul was that the government was not in control of donor funds that flowed in after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. "We have to learn from the last two years' experience; this is a lot of money and it will help us achieve our national aspirations if it is planned, implemented and monitored by the government rather than NGOs," Afghan planning minister, Ramazan Bashardost, told IRIN. Some international donors were reluctant to give money direct to Afghanistan's fledgling administration, fearing a lack of experience, and funding the work of hundreds of international relief and reconstruction organisations instead. The newly-assigned minister said he would propose a new regulatory NGOs framework to the ADF aiming to prevent what he said was "the bitter experiences of the past two years of the uncoordinated reconstruction process". This is the second time the ADF is discussing the national budget and programmes with donors and international counterparts. In mid-March 2003, the Afghan government sketched out an annual budget at a similar conference in Kabul. The 2003 ADF planned a budget worth US $550 million, of which $200 million was expected to come from domestic revenue and $350 million from donors.