With the establishment of the new government, it is hoped that the clouds of hopelessness will fade away and every sector of life will start improving. The country faced one of the worst economic and the resultant security problems in last ten to twelve months due to the uncertainties. First fear was the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country and then, people were doubtful about the smooth transition of power and existence of democracy. Because of these two fears, no new investments were made. Large number of people withdrew their wealth from national banks and local businesses and utilized them to buy property in the foreign countries or to invest them in businesses there. In such circumstances, the businesses stopped functioning, unemployment rose sharply, and the overall economy started shrinking.

The announcement of Ministry of Finance to be unable to pay the salaries of government servants showed the actual condition of the government and in general, it depicted the true picture of the economy of the country. Now the new government’s establishment has given hope to everyone and especially the local and foreign investors are very much willing to bring in their investments.

With this, large numbers of international donor agencies and welfare NGOs are also willing to come to the country and resume their work of the re-establishment of the county. It is hoped that millions of dollars will flow into the country and thousands of new jobs will be created which would bring a general improvement in the conditions of economy and the country. But last thirteen years also witnessed the extraordinary and unbelievable corruption in the international donations that were aimed for the betterment of the common people but they ended in the pockets and international bank accounts of a limited number of people. It is the reason why, the common man is still suffering and not much change can be seen in the life of a common Afghan.

But there were very limited number of people including of businessmen, government employees, ministers, tribal chiefs, parliamentarians, chiefs and top officials of security forces and other influential members of the society who made unbelievable fortune from this money aimed for the betterment of people. It is the reason why, we have large number of such Afghans who bought expensive properties in Dubai, Turkey and some other parts of the world, who can afford to go to European countries for their vacations, who live in the most expensive and luxuries villas in the major cities, and who have access to the most expensive cars, electronic devices and branded clothing.

This trend of mass corruption also disappointed and badly discouraged our international friends and donors who had given this money for the progress of the country and betterment of people but their desired targets were not achieved and in a way, the money collected from their tax-payers were wasted in Afghanistan. However, fearing that country should not fall into the hands of Taliban and Afghanistan should not turn into another Iraq, they are again willing to come back to the country and start their projects for the betterment of the country and the people. But if they were cheated once again and their investments and donation were once again misused, we will lose their trust forever and after that, no one would be willing to come to Afghanistan for any kind of help.

It becomes the top most priority of the new government to make sure that international donations should be used properly and no penny should be wasted from it. In past, the biggest problem in this regard was the lack of a proper mechanism due to which these NGOs were befooled by local contractors and builders and large amount of money was wasted in this way. The first work to be done in this regard is to devise and implement a proper mechanism so that the money entering the country should not fall into wrong hands and it should be able to address its objective. For this, we don’t have much time to be wasted and immediate work should be started in this regard.

Another work that new government can do is to bring transparency in Ministries of Finance and Commerce because these two ministries were really discouraging for any kind of foreign investments and starting any new business was a very difficult work in Afghanistan. New government should also work so that new investors and businessmen should be attracted to bring their money into the country. In this regard, the mechanism of making investments and doing new business should be made easy and many other incentives can also be given to the businessmen and investors.

And more importantly, government should start immediate work to bring back money from all those who looted the money of public in last thirteen years. It is known to all that even small government employees were able to make property of millions of dollars and there are large numbers of Afghan millionaires who made their fortune with the public money. If investigations are initiated and they are forced to bring back the money, government may be able to find a source of very good income. Large sums of money obtained from these criminals would provide a good support for the feeble economy of the country.