U.S. seeks a peace deal with Taliban to withdraw its troops from the country.
Afghanistan will need vast amounts of foreign funding to keep its government afloat, a U.S. agency said Thursday.
International money pays for roughly 75% of all of Afghanistan’s costs while government revenue covers barely a quarter of Afghan public expenditures.
The agency’s latest report was sharply critical of the Afghan government’s efforts to curb corruption, saying it is one of the biggest concerns among frustrated donors.
President Ashraf Ghani’s administration “is more interested in checking off boxes for the international community than in actually uprooting its corruption problem,” the report said, referring to the Afghan government.
Afghanistan ranked last in the Asia-Pacific region for corruption, a global watchdog said earlier in January.
According to Transparency International, Afghanistan’s global ranking last year — at 173 of 180 countries it surveyed — was the worst since the group began ranking the country in 2005.
Even as the international community is paying billions of dollars annually, the poverty rate in Afghanistan is climbing.
In 2012, 37% of Afghans were listed below the poverty rate, surviving on less than $1 a day.
Today that figure has risen to 55% of Afghans.
The report’s findings come ahead of a U.N.-hosted international donors conference this year that could be critical for Afghanistan’s future.
In 2016, world donors meeting in Brussels pledged $15 billion for Afghanistan.
The U.S. agency said the problem of corruption should be the central issue in the 2020 donor conference.
It recommended that international donors use its Afghan anti-corruption audits as a guide to directing funding more effectively, as well as monitoring actual results and exerting constructive influence on the Afghan government.
The Taliban and the U.S. are currently holding peace talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office.
The negotiations have become bogged down over agreeing on how to end or substantially reduce hostilities.
A reduction in violence would allow the U.S. and Taliban to sign a final agreement, which in turn would open the way for America to bring its troops home.
