US to spend 1.3 billion USD on Afghan bases

Washington, October 18: While Washington weighs its options on sending more troops to Afghanistan, the US military is spending billions of dollars on upgrading its bases in the country.

The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition that the US military wants to spend 1.3 billion dollars on more than 100 projects across Afghanistan.

Some 30 million dollars of the money will be spent on the main US base located near the northern Afghan city of Bagram to build a passenger terminal and adjacent cargo facility to handle the flow of troops.

The move is aimed at ensuring that Afghanistan’s infrastructure can support the US and NATO forces for years to come.

The US military has already spent roughly 2.7 billion dollars on construction in the past three years.

This comes as Washington says it closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit.

—–Agencies