World Bank; Afganistan Reconstruction Trust Fund

Description What is done in the programme or project and why, what results are pursued, who benefits from the activities and who are involved in the implementation.

The Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) manages donor contributions for the payment of civil servants' salaries, recurring budgetary expenditures of the Government and priority projects to rebuild Afghanistan. ARTF has been the most important channel of Finnish support to Afghanistan. About half of the support managed by the regional department has been directed through the ARTF. Trust Fund is managed by the World Bank. The ARTF agreement between the Bank and Finland is concluded annually. Afghanistan has been able to increase the domestic revenues but the heavy dependency of foreign aid will continue for a long time. ARTF will remain the main channel for aid also in the near future. It is justified that also the main portion of Finnish aid for Afghanistan continues through ARTF. From 2019 half of the Finnish ARTF-support is planned to go through the general basket, 25 % through CC (Citizen’s Charter), which improves public services and 25 % through EQRA (Education Quality Reform in Afghanistan). CC is a successor for NSP and EQRA is a successor for EQUIP. NSP was widely regarded as the best aid program in Afghanistan. It is the only programme, which has been active in all 34 provinces. Tens of thousands of NSP-projects were implemented at the village level. Projects were usually related to infra, water, irrigation, education and energy. NSP diverted the peace dividends worth of 1.15 billion dollars to more than 22000 villages out of 40 000 villages. Several million villagers benefitted from NSP. EQUIP enabled children's, especially girl's rights to receive high quality education. EQUIP supported also the school building and maintenance and the teacher training. Since 2002 the number of pupils has increased from one million to almost 9 million, of whom 40 % are girls. The latest EQUIP phase received 408 million dollars and its effect to education sector was significant.