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World Bank works to redirect frozen funds for humanitarian aid only
The World Bank is finalizing a proposal to deliver up to $500 million from a frozen Afghanistan aid fund to humanitarian agencies, people familiar with the plans told Reuters, but it leaves out tens of thousands of public sector workers and remains complicated by U.S. sanctions.
Board members will meet informally on Tuesday to discuss the proposal, hammered out in recent weeks with U.S. and U.N. officials, to redirect the funds from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which has a total of $1.5 billion, Reuters reported.
Afghanistan’s 39 million people face a collapsing economy, a winter of food shortages and growing poverty three months after the the former government collapsed.
Afghan experts said the aid will help, but big gaps remain, including how to get the funds into Afghanistan without exposing the financial institutions involved to U.S. sanctions, and the lack of focus on state workers, the sources said.
The money will go mainly to addressing urgent health care needs in Afghanistan, where less than 7% of the population has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, they said.
For now, it will not cover salaries for teachers and other government workers, a policy that the experts say could hasten the collapse of Afghanistan’s public education, healthcare and social services systems.
They warn that hundreds of thousands of workers, who have been unpaid for months, could stop showing up for their jobs and join a massive exodus from the country.
The World Bank will have no oversight of the funds once transferred into Afghanistan, said one of the sources familiar with the plans. A U.S. official stressed that UNICEF and other recipient agencies would have “their own controls and policies in place.”
“The proposal calls for the World Bank to transfer the money to the U.N. and other humanitarian agencies, without any oversight or reporting, but it says nothing about the financial sector, or how the money will get into the country,” the source said, calling U.S. sanctions a major constraint.
While the U.S. Treasury has provided “comfort letters” assuring banks that they can process humanitarian transactions, concern about sanctions continues to prevent passage of even basic supplies, including food and medicine, the source added.
“We’re driving the country into the dust,” said the source. Crippling sanctions and failure to take care of public sector workers will “create more refugees, more desperation and more extremism.”
A State Department spokesperson confirmed that Washington is working with the World Bank and other donors on how to use the funds, including potentially paying those who work in “critical positions such as healthcare workers and teachers.”
The spokesperson said the U.S. government remains committed to meeting the critical needs of the Afghan people, “especially across health, nutrition, education, and food security sectors … but international aid is not a silver bullet.”
Established in 2002 and administered by the World Bank, the ARTF was the largest financing source for Afghanistan’s civilian budget, which was more than 70% funded by foreign aid.
The World Bank suspended disbursements after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) takeover. At the same time, Washington stopped supplying U.S. dollars to the country and joined in freezing some $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets and halting financial assistance.
One major problem is the lack of a mechanism to monitor disbursements of funds in Afghanistan to ensure Taliban leaders and fighters do not access them, a third source said.
The Ministry of Interior says that Afghanistan has started exporting goods to Turkey via the Herat-Khaf railway line.
In a post on X, the ministry said: “Afghanistan’s exports to Turkey started in a calm atmosphere through the Herat-Khaf railway line.”
The ministry added that one train will run daily for a month and then two trains will run daily.
According to the ministry, the security of Khaf-Herat railway line is provided by the guards of the National Public Protection Agency.
Khaf-Herat railway project not only connects Iran and Afghanistan by rail, but also completes a 2,000-kilometer route along the east-west rail corridor from China, through Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan, to Iran, and on to Turkey and Europe.
As a landlocked country, this railway network will provide a safe route to connect with Europe via Iran’s railway network and Iran’s southern ports.
This railway line is strategic for trade between Iran and Afghanistan and will allow six million tons of goods to be sent between the two countries.
A joint expo between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan will be held in Kabul in the next four days, officials said on Sunday.
Officials of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce said that the two-day expo will be held for the purpose of expanding and strengthening trade relations between the two countries.
“This expo will be held as a follow-up of the Kazakh-Afghan international expo, which was held in the city of Astana, Kazakhstan, with the participation of a large delegation of the government and the private sector of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” Abdulsalam Javad Akhundzadeh, the spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, said.
“At this expo, domestic products from different sectors of Afghanistan and the Republic of Kazakhstan will be put on display for two days.”
According to officials, 40 large Kazakh companies, and 40 large Afghan companies will exhibit their products.
Mohammad Saber Latifi, head of the Afghanistan International Expo Center, said that fruits, minerals and commercial services will be displayed at the expo.
During the expo, various memorandums of understanding for the trade of goods are also expected to be signed by companies.
The absence of GDP growth coupled with declining external financing avenues for off-budget expenditures paint a bleak picture of Afghanistan’s economic prospects, the World Bank said.
After a severe 20.7 percent GDP contraction in 2021, the Afghan economy contracted further by 6.2 percent in 2022, the bank said in a report.
“While Afghanistan’s agricultural and subsistence economy, including illicit opium production, provided some resilience in rural areas, higher prices, reduced demand, lower employment, and disruptions to services had severe impacts across the country,” it said.
The proportion of households that did not have enough income to meet basic food needs more than doubled from 16 percent to 36 percent in this period, according to the bank.
In the context of deep concerns about the policies of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), including restrictions imposed on women and girls, the international community, including the World Bank, recalibrated its approach to supporting Afghanistan: first to providing humanitarian support and then to providing off-budget support for basic service delivery and livelihoods.
However, IEA moved to restore domestic revenues, which reached $2.2 billion or 15 percent of GDP in 2022. “Nevertheless, overall economic activity remained depressed, unemployment stayed high, and the banking sector was dysfunctional due to constraints on international transfers and concerns about liquidity and solvency.”
World Bank said that Afghanistan’s economic outlook remains uncertain, with the threat of stagnation looming large until at least 2025. “This economic stagnation will deepen poverty and unemployment, with job opportunities expected to decrease and food insecurity expected to increase.”
The bank noted that for a sustainable future, Afghanistan needs to focus on its comparative advantages, particularly in the agricultural and extractive sectors. Agriculture could be a key driver of growth and poverty reduction, with the potential to create jobs, it added.
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