Afghanistan needs $20 billion, says finance head

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan needs up to $20 billion over the next five years to put the war-shattered country back on its feet and help ease its dependence on foreign aid, the finance minister said Friday.

That amount is over four times the $4.5 billion pledged by international donors in January to help rebuild the country. Most of that money has yet to arrive.

"The needs of this country are immense, and if you compare us to Kosovo or to Bosnia or to East Timor -- much smaller places -- the extent of commitment was far larger," said Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani.

"This $4.5 billion ... is just an initial investment in our future, it will by no means suffice."

Ghani was speaking to reporters in Kabul on the eve of a two-day meeting of the "implementation group," a body created at the Tokyo conference to coordinate and review donor assistance to Afghanistan.

Ghani said Afghan businessmen, many of whom struggled through 23 years of war, had developed "entrepreneurial talent" that should be capitalized on.

Independence from aid

"Our goal is not to be dependent on the aid system. The vision of the future that we have is of a prosperous, stable country," Ghani said. "Today we rank 169th out of 174 countries on human development indicators."

An initial assessment of reconstruction needs for Afghanistan was carried out last year by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the U.N. Development Program.

"Their initial estimation ... was $10 billion for five years. Our own estimates were between $17 billion to $20 billion," Ghani said.

He didn't give a breakdown of what the money was needed for, but said the unexpectedly quick return of refugees would add hundreds of millions of dollars to costs of re-building.

Ghani said the government had raised about 80 percent of its $460 million budget for the Afghan fiscal year, which runs from March 2002 to March 2003.