7 December 2020, Kandahar. The Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) was officially inaugurated in Kandahar municipality by Mr. Hayatullah Hayat, Governor of Kandahar Province, Mr. Rafeiullah Hayat, Mayor of Kandahar, Mr. Muhammad Amin Tokhi, Revenue Director of the Deputy Ministry for Municipalities and UN-Habitat officials. IFMS is a digital system to manage invoicing and collection of municipal revenues.

In his address, the Kandahar governor urged citizens to work with municipalities to improve urban services. He said, “If we would like to have a clean and green city then we have to fully support the municipality as this is the responsibility of both the citizens and the municipality. The IFMS system will enable the municipality to improve financial management for better urban services”.

Mr. Hayatullah Hayat, the governer of Kandahar

Mr. Tokhi thanked UN-Habitat for providing technical support to Kandahar municipality. “This new system will bring a lot of positive changes in the revenue system of the municipality such as business licensing and safayi. Previously, it took several days to issue a safayi notebook or business license, but with the new system, these processes will be much faster.”

IFMS system lanched in Kandahar municipality

UN-Habitat supported Kandahar municipality to survey and register urban properties, to produce safayi invoices and to collect safayi fees under the City for All (CFA) national programme.  In Kandahar, more than 69,000 surveyed properties were invoiced, resulting in more than 334 million Afs in additional safayi revenue. The CFA programme is also being implemented in Herat, Farah, Bamyan, Nili, Mazar-e-sharif, and Jalalabad municipalities.

The City for All programme leads the localization of the New Urban Agenda in Afghanistan. The programme components include urban regulation, urban planning, and municipal finance as key elements of sustainable urbanization. The CFA programme is a flagship action of the Government of Afghanistan’s Urban National Priority Programme (U-NPP) and is funded by the European Union.