AT-KABUL: The Ministry of Education (MoE) has signed contracts with three foreign publishing companies to print 16 million textbooks for school students within next four months.
The contracts were awarded to two Indian companies and one Vietnamese publication center. The minister for education, Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, signed the contracts with the companies here on Tuesday.
Balkhi said the funds for printing the books had been provided by the Danish government. The printing will cost $5.5 million.
He said that procurement procedure was initiated before he became the minister, but the contracts were signed now.
The minister said that the textbooks would be published based on international standards and the publication centers would be fined if they used low-quality material.
He termed the number of books insufficient and said that $25 million has been allocated for printing of more textbooks in September this year.
The MoE is mulling to print more textbooks in the country for better monitoring and to support the private sector.