What it’s short of is the administrative capacity to spend it. The Afghan budget director reports that in the last Persian year, the Afghan government spent only 40 percent of what it had budgeted for development. Deputy Public Works Minister Ahmad Shah Walid detailed just one of the many problems. He said $34 million pledged by Saudi Arabia for a stretch of highway was never spent because the work had been assigned to an Iranian construction outfit and the Saudis refused to work with Iranians, the AP reported last week.
