Afghan assembly endorses amended budget

KABUL, June 3 (Reuters) Afghanistan's lower house of parliament approved the government's amended budget today after initially rejecting it a month ago over spending plans and salary levels, a lawmaker said.

''The budget was approved today,'' said Shukria Barakzai, a lawmaker holding one of the seats reserved for women.

The 9-month-old assembly had earlier blocked the budget because of civil servants' low pay levels and over plans to spend 47 million dollars on revamping two presidential palaces and some ministries.

The 47 million dollars has been reallocated to emergency programmes, but the parliament only managed to squeeze a ''meagre'' rise in civil servants' pay, Barakzai said.

Elected last September, the parliament includes members of the mujahideen factions that fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, ex-communists, former Taliban, women's rights activists and young professionals.

The ordinary budget for the fiscal year, that started on March 21, is over 831 million dollars, while 1.37 billion dollars was allocated for development projects, Barakzai said.

Barakzai said 75 per cent of the total budget comes from Western donors, who have also sent thousands of troops to help fight Taliban and al Qaeda militants, and to stop a repeat of the civil war suffered in the early 1990s.

The parliament, the first after decades of conflict, convened in December and performed its first major task in April when it approved most members of President Hamid Karzai's new cabinet.

REUTERS SHB RAI2017