8th Steering Committee Meeting of State and Resilience Building Contract Held
State and Resilience Building Contract held its 8th Steering Committee meeting between the Government of Afghanistan and European Union. The meeting was co-chaired by H.E. Abdul HadiArghandiwal, Acting Finance Minister, and Mr. Pierre Mayaudon, EU ambassador to Kabul. The event took place in Char Chinar Palace; government senior officials, ministers, and deputy ministers of line ministries, as well as EU senior officials participated at this meeting.
The key speakers, Minister Arghandiwal and Mr. Pierre Mayaudon, talked about the impacts of COVID-19 on Afghanistan economy, the government’s response, progress in the fight against the virus, challenges to reforms, and good governance.
Mohammad Nasser Sedighi, Director General of Coordination, Monitoring and Reporting, and Stefan Lock, Head of EU Development Cooperation to Afghanistanpresented a concise report on the achievements and implementation of the indicators (fixed and variable) of the bilateral State Building Contract for 2019. “We need to focus on a mechanism for women and youth empowerment and think about their participation in terms job creation” they added. They further stated that: "We do not accept any parallel financing and waste of resources for the implementation of this project, but our goal is to use the available resources and have a sustainable and cost-effective program."
In addition, they stressed that the project objectives should be coordinated with national priority programs and the second document of the National Peace and Development Framework of Afghanistan.
Likewise, they presented the draft that agrees on fixed and variable indicators of the state-building contract for 2020, which was approved by the parties after comprehensive discussions.
Moreover, they outlined the government's development agenda and future plans for the European Union.
It is worth mentioning that, the government of Afghanistan has successfully fulfilled all commitments and indicators set for 2019 and amendment of the contract for 2020 has been extended until late march 2021 due to the delay caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The financial ceiling of this contract is 100 million Euros and subject to fulfillment of obligations
