Report: Afghan aid money wasted

Spending on development is dwarfed by the $65,000 a minute spent by the US to fight the Taliban [AP] Afghanistan is highly dependent on foreign aid, but a new study says that much of it is being wasted. 

  The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an alliance of 94 international aid agencies, said in a report on Tuesday that a vast amount is spent on expatriate staff's high salaries, security and living arrangements.

Since 2001, 40 per cent of Western aid worth $15 billion have been spent on projects that return money to donor nations through fees to contractors and salaries to employees from those countries.

The study says that Afghanistan's biggest donor, USAID, allocates close to half of its funds to five large US contractors and that "it is clear that substantial amounts of aid continue to be absorbed in corporate profits."

The five companies are KBR, the Louis Berger Group, Chemonics International, Bearing Point and Dyncorp International, the report said.

The report, which was written by Oxfam, a British charity, said the cost of a full-time expatriate consultant working in Afghanistan is around $250,000. It is some 200 times the average annual salary of an Afghan civil servant, who is paid less than $1,000 per year.