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U.N. has millions in Afghanistan bank, but cannot use it
The United Nations has about $135 million in the bank in Afghanistan but is unable to use it because the Islamic Emirate-run central bank cannot convert it to the afghani currency, a senior U.N. official said on Thursday.
Abdallah al Dardari, head of the U.N. Development Programme in Afghanistan, said the United Nations had taken the U.S. dollars into the country and deposited it with the Afghanistan International Bank “with a clear promise from the central bank that fresh cash will be automatically converted to afghanis.”
“This did not happen,” he told the ACAMS Global Sanctions Space Summit, adding that UNDP itself has “$30 million stuck at AIB that I cannot convert to afghanis and without afghanis as you can imagine, we cannot implement all our programs.”
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), who seized power in August, banned the use of foreign currency in a country where U.S. dollars were common.
The IEA has long been under international sanctions, which the United Nations and aid groups say are now hindering humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, where more than half the country’s 39 million people suffer extreme hunger and the economy, education and social services face collapse.
Billions of dollars in Afghan central bank reserves and foreign development aid have been frozen to prevent it from falling into IEA hands. International banks are wary of breaching sanctions, leaving the United Nations and aid groups struggling to get enough money into the country.
Liquidity is also a problem. Al Dardari told Reuters in November that while there was about $4 billion worth of afghanis in the economy, only about $500 million worth was in circulation.
The United Nations and the World Bank are discussing a possible swap facility, aid groups and U.N. officials have said.
Al Dardari said on Thursday that this would allow cash for humanitarian operations to be paid into a mechanism abroad and then afghanis could be collected “from major traders and mobile companies from inside Afghanistan.”
He also said lessons could be learned from a program in Myanmar, where electronic payment systems bypassed the central bank. Myanmar’s military have been hit with a raft of sanctions by the United States and others since a coup a year ago.
Pakistan’s government on Friday extended the stay of Afghan refugees in the country till June 30, amid repatriation of illegal foreign nationals.
There are around 1.3 million registered Afghans living in Pakistan, according to a spokesman for UN refugee agency UNHCR in Islamabad, Dawn newspaper reported.
“On the recommendation of the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, the federal cabinet approved the extension of the validity of PoR cards of Afghan refugees from April 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024,” said an official statement, issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.
The PoR cardholders will be repatriated in the third phase of the plan that will begin after the repatriation of “illegal foreign nationals” residing in Pakistan is completed, the statement added.
The PoR card holders avail schools, bank accounts and other facilities in Pakistan.
Repatriation of undocumented refugees began on November 1 and continues. More than 500,000 Afghans have been expelled so far.
John Bass, US acting under secretary of state for political affairs, will travel to Qatar and Pakistan April 26-30, US State Department announced on Friday.
In Doha, Qatar, he will meet with senior Qatari government officials and other diplomatic missions to discuss support for Afghanistan and shared security interests in the region, US State Department said in a statement.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, Under Secretary Bass will meet with senior Pakistani government officials to discuss a range of regional and bilateral issues as part of the U.S.-Pakistani partnership, the statement added.
John Bass served as US ambassador to Afghanistan under Donald Trump administration between December 2017 and January 2020.
A tripartite meeting between the delegations of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was held in Kabul with the aim of connecting North Asia to South Asia and reducing transit and transportation costs among these three countries, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce said in a statement.
In this meeting, an agreement was reached on the creation of a joint technical committee to continue the talks.
This tripartite meeting was held under the leadership of Nooruddin Azizi, the Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Vice President of Turkmenistan and Srik Zhumangarin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan.
Earlier, a bilateral meeting was held between the delegation of the Islamic Emirate and Turkmenistan. The ministry of commerce said the participants of the meeting discussed the construction of a large joint logistics center in Torghondi, the trilateral transit agreement between the IEA, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, the expansion of Afghanistan’s railway, solving issues related to Afghan transit and export goods, and a number of other commercial issues.
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