 Good morning. Good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are joining us from my name is Scott Warden And I am the director of the Afghanistan program for the US Institute of Peace I'd like to thank our distinguished panelists For taking time out of their busy schedule to be with us today as well as the World Bank for its support and Cooperation in organizing this timely event on Afghanistan's economy We're thrilled to have so many of joining us virtually as well as in person And you can engage with this event and with each other through Twitter throughout the event using today's hashtag Hashtag US IP Afghanistan all one word We also invite all of you to take part in today's discussion by asking a question using the chat box function on the Event page we hope that you include your name and specify where you are joining us from and we'll select questions from the chat Put them on cards and give to the moderator throughout the discussion For those in person my colleagues will be distributing no cards and please write your questions on those cards To become involved as many of you know US IP was founded 35 years ago by the US Congress as an independent nonpartisan National Institute tasked with preventing mitigating and resolving violent conflict as you can see in Afghanistan We still have more work to do US IP is actively engaged on Afghanistan program since 2002 and We continue to engage with Afghans both abroad and in the country to try to mitigate the dire humanitarian economic and human rights conditions that are going on now as We see from the headlines coming from Afghanistan There is a distinct humanitarian crisis, but this is underpinned by an economic crisis and even driven by the economic crisis this is caused by the lack of Development aid it's caused by the freezing of central bank assets. It's caused by a cash crunch as a result of a stalling of the banking system and other factors To address the crisis however I think the dimensions of it need to be more clear and this is the purpose of today's discussion We'll eat off by two new reports by the World Bank The first is a private sector rapid survey which was released on April 7th And this assesses the impact of the August 2021 Political crisis in the takeover of Afghanistan on private firms and jobs in Afghanistan The second report is the first Afghanistan development update which has been released since the Taliban took over and that is being released today So we will hear the findings from these two reports and then have a discussion with our distinguished panel about the Implications and where to go from here Our moderator today is bill bird in the center. He is the senior expert on Afghanistan with us IP He has spent decades working on Afghanistan including serving as the World Bank's country manager from 2002 to 2006 And then serving as an economic advisor on Afghanistan before joining us IP Thanks everybody for joining us, and I will turn it over to bill to introduce the panelists and leave the discussion Thank You Scott for the Introduction I'm really happy and actually thrilled to be moderating today. That's not working Are any of them working? Hello I'm just Yeah, I think I think I'd better not repeat all the introductions, but happy to So Andrea Dalolio is the lead country economist for Afghanistan currently focusing on private sector and financial Sector issues. He worked with IFC on the enabling environment in Tajikistan for business then in Kazakhstan coordinating Bank private sector and financial sector development operations in Central Asia in between 2012 and 2016 he was based in Tanzania working on Tanzania Uganda and Burundi and more recently in the Europe and Central Asia Department and Previously before joining the bank. He was a management consultant at McKinsey and company Jeffrey Grieco probably needs no introduction at all for this group, but I Let's I will just pick out a few highlights I think but he's president and CEO of the Afghanistan African-American Chamber of Commerce where he served on AACC's board since 2011 He's proactively advocated for the needs of Afghan businesses and NGOs as well as in recent months assisting with the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan refugees and promoting humanitarian support to the Afghan people He manages a number of Afghanistan working groups And he also serves as an independent foreign policy and business consultant Amid a long and distinguished career He served as assistant administrator for Legislative and public affairs at USAID and has represented multinational corporations in their investments in global markets so now we really get into the substance and This is these are exciting reports and I think we should focus Not so much on all the detail and recent developments But much more on the current situation and what needs to be done moving forward. So In that light, I'll be asking an opening question to each panelist in turn So for so Tobias, this is the World Bank's first development update since the Taliban takeover and I don't think we need to go back to the economic implosion We've seen over the past eight months, but the report provides excellent background on that and I encourage everybody to read it For that background to to look at what's been happening economically in the last eight months But but turning to the present situation. What are your four to five key takeaways? That you would like to emphasize in terms of what's happening now And then what are the three to four key recommendations of the report that need to be taken forward? Thank you so much Bill So main takeaways regarding the current situation You know, I think the biggest takeaway probably from the report is the severity of the current situation We are seeing now an economy that was Dependent upon grants for 45 percent of GDP 75 percent of public spending half of the government budget And and a large proportion of those grants have ceased At the same time as there has been a major macroeconomic adjustment being caused by The loss of hard currency inflows and the loss of access to foreign exchange reserves On top of which there is a major financial sector crisis Which has been triggered by the breakdown of international banking relationships so three crises stacked one on top of the other and We're seeing an estimated one-third reduction in incomes In an economy that was already one of the poorest in the world Where the poverty rate was 47 percent and where we estimate another 45 percent of the population was at risk of falling into poverty And we have estimated that per capita incomes now have fallen back to around 2007 levels So we've lost 15 years of development progress So it's it's it's hard to overstate the extent and depth of the current crisis So that that would be my my first takeaway my second takeaway would be it's hard to see on the current trajectory How this is going to improve If things remain as they are yes I think there's going to be some adjustment the private sector will find ways of doing things But but broadly speaking on the current trajectory When you have a population growth rate of two and a half percent and the economy is growing it Maybe three percent over the next ten years We're not going to be making any progress So so that really means that living standards are not going to be improving and because of that you're going to see Continued dependence upon humanitarian support. You're going to see continued widespread poverty And you're going to see the risks that come with that. You're going to see displacement extremism desperation Is is is that the future that we want for Afghanistan? And I think the third takeaway would be that there is an alternative There is an existence of an alternative path and this is what comes out of so much of the analytical work that the World Bank's done Over the past frankly 20 years. This is an economy that does have Endowments, it's got a young and growing population It's got an agricultural sector that could expand that that is less irrigated now than it was in 1975 It is an economy where you have huge extractives potential So there is this alternative pathway where we move towards mobilizing Those endowments towards a sustainable path a private sector led development That in many ways would get us to a war towards a more Solid economic foundation to the one that we have built over the past 20 years So I think that those would be the three takeaways and in terms of the recommendations I Think the critical recommendation really is on the interim Taliban administration. This this is the situation at the moment Cannot be Resolved without international support and that international support seems very unlikely to be forthcoming Unless there is some basic adherence to standards of the treatment of women and girls democracy democratic rights And and beyond that any international supports very unlikely to be effective Unless there are some acceptance of these basic Fundamentals of economic management the need to have a stable macroeconomic framework the need to have some Independence and central bank the need to have capable people and key economic ministries Without that, it's very hard to see how we we get out of the current trajectory The second recommendation I think would be more for the international community And it would be saying that we really don't want to repeat some of the mistakes We've made in the past what we're looking at now is quite large amounts of international assistance being Mobilized for emergency and humanitarian support that is going through off-budget channel And we have seen from our past experience in Afghanistan that that brings risks unless we really focus on Coordination alignment and planning of that support So what we need to be doing now as an international community is making sure that this Inflow of funds is not creating the economic distortions the challenges to government to governance the corruption The negative political impacts that large aid and flows in Afghanistan have caused and in living memory and and that really I think Requires us to take a very coordinated approach It requires us to have some kind of framework to guide Investment and spending decisions and it requires us to be engaging with the international Interim Taliban administration to understand What the division of labor is in terms of what they will be paying for what we will be paying for and what is required to move Afghanistan towards a recovery trajectory and in I think my third and and final take away in terms of recommendations We need to move away from the street actually we need to move away From a trajectory of continued dependence upon emergency and humanitarian support And that means a broader range of international assistance is going to be required It means we're going to have to find ways of restoring the functionality of the financial sector It means we're going to have to be providing support to a broader range of public services We're going to have to be finding ways to support some of the key enabling environments for private sector investment infrastructure risk management Mechanisms for for private sector firms, but this brings me back to the first recommendation It's very hard to be able to see us doing that Unless there is some concession and compromise by the interim Taliban administration Some adherence to basic international standards that allow us to help Let me stop there. Thank you, Bill. Thank you Tobias a lot of food for thought there Which some of those specific areas will get into in the in the in the next round of questions Yeah, it's it's puzzling to me why economic management is such a non ideological topic and yet they're messing that up, too Because that would be a rather easy thing for them to improve and get the World Bank on their side, for example Now he thank you so much for coming and I'd just like to give you the opportunity to comment on the World Bank's Development update, but more broadly based on your extensive experience in the Ministry of Finance How do you see the fiscal situation and outlook at present and Basically, what needs to be done to get the finance ministry, which was a premier Institute Tushin when you were there back on track Thank you so much bill and very honored and pleased to be here first of all Let me congratulate World Bank for the release of both reports and this is Evidence of how much World Bank's engagement is vital to Afghanistan and the overall analysis of the situation There as evident from the report the situation seems very daunting unfortunately and as predicted by many of us before the August 15 events and like Tobias said the unfortunate reality that we have lost the progress of 15 years by 20 years almost We know there are challenges in terms of data gathering and transparency on the ground and despite that the economic outlook report looks Looks very informative which gives account of what the situation actually looks like in a comprehensive manner But let me also not to repeat but give the backdrop That we are discussing a series of events That also affected the situation before August 15 that Afghanistan was already struggling with COVID-19 with political and security uncertainty The drought that in 2020 that all affected the situation And the imminent fiscal challenges of a dependency with imminent unpredictable aid that also Very much influenced the programming capacity of the government and also donors for the past couple of years and even before 2020 Afghanistan government at least heard about donor fatigue and that brought a lot of discouragement to the development programming and economic panic I think we have all if we go to the report we It has very well described the very particular Events and causes of the economic collapse The large military contracts that halted Money big investments in project that were funded through multilateral agencies were suspended salary to The unfortunate parallel civil servant system that was established in Afghanistan in terms of national technical assistance They were all halted but of course We the the challenges of transactions and payments that that crippled trade and important exports But let's also keep in mind and as said earlier that the economic situation followed the political Events and these two cannot be De-coupled so if if you ask me whether the challenges fiscal challenges So the main fiscal challenge is how to offset an economy that was funded by Approximately eight billion of dollars investment gap in Afghanistan Either through aid and trade and if you put it in an overall economic perspective It is it's such a challenging question and first of all if the issue the fiscal issues cannot be discussed in a vacuum of political events and It's it's so difficult to alienate this and there is no technical alternative if you do not discuss the political willingness of the Taliban regime For governance issues for example if you're discussing fiscal gap you have to discuss aid trade or revenue generation Or both of them if you if you want to generate revenues you have to look at trade You have to look look at the issues of transactions and payments and that goes back to the issue of recognition of Taliban and easing of sanctions and it will go back to The Taliban's willingness to adhere to the human rights women rights and some of the standards that Tobias talked about and the overall willingness of Taliban as As how they would want to govern Afghanistan Also in broader terms of economy all those Endowments that we are talking about the mining sector or the agriculture sector the broader question is under what legal framework are these sectors Operating mining sector itself is a very complex issue and the already legal the complex legal environment before 2020 events and 2021 events Under a constitutional framework and what will be Taliban's reaction to that but despite these challenges, I think there are few Quick indicators, I would say for Taliban to demonstrate their willingness for governance Which has to be closely monitored by international community But I'll also keep in mind that whenever we are talking about these alternatives. There's also a risk of Supporting or Fallen into danger of supporting a government that's not adhering to international standards and human rights standards For example, one of those indicators could be a development plan by the Taliban and right now There seems to be no comprehensive development plan and path for the Taliban at what sectors are their priorities and what are they really thinking in terms of economic development and What are they where are the financial resources coming and how are they managing the parallel funding Second, we've all noticed that the Taliban regime had an interim budget of three years of three months It will be very interesting that they exhibit transparency for the next budget and but also The expenditures of the three months budget that they had they had released. I See no fiscal at least till till date no fiscal and financial report of the three months budget and Also on the revenues that how they were How they were generated and where they have been spent Also an indicator of how much so how many civil servants are being paid their salaries salaries of the teachers the the regime's plan on what would be the The resources and how how this will be tackled The other indicator is also Using of existing resources and the transparency. I think there have been many systems That were invested on in the past couple of years Taliban regime have to show willingness to use these systems and be transparent in terms of reporting Most importantly, I think we've a device of all the dimension that is maintaining of a network of professionals in the Ministry of Finance That are apolitical and free of any political interference, which seems Very very difficult, but this is a show of intent from their part. What I very also concerned is in the lack of in the absence of freedom of speech in media and civil society in Afghanistan what will be a source of Information on all these measures and how all these measures will be monitored and reported back And will not be influenced. I'll stop here and we can we can come up to the other topics later. Thank you Thank you so much. Nahid lots of very important points and I certainly agree with you that Whereas the Taliban have been doing something on revenue We seem not to have much idea of what how they're spending that money and that is obviously a concern and just to give one example of my own the Their budget their three-month budget did provide for payment of teacher salaries and it's really important to know what is happening there Because until the recent education announcement the donors were and maybe still are willing to pay teacher salaries if If girls go back to school, but then what that would do would be freeing up Taliban resources for jails or security or Who knows any other events or so this kind of both both from the Taliban side We need a clear budget and from the international community You know how that fits in given the fungibility of resources I've already exceeded my red as monitor so that's moderator So let me move on but we will come back to some of these points so Andrea the private sector is rightly seen as the engine of economic growth in any country and the banks report really systematically delves into the perception views and Self-reported actions of an important sample of Afghan businesses So what are the four to five key takeaways from this report that you would like to emphasize in terms of the current situation of the Private sector and the problems it faces and then what may be going a little bit beyond the report What would be your three to four key recommendations on that would need to be taken forward on the private sector? So thank you very much Billy and colleagues for inviting us It's actually very good to be to be here and giving voice to the private sector because really this report that is really coming out of a survey of about hundred Really to get the sense of what is really the impact of the situation So let me start by giving you a sense of what you know, what are the constraints that we hear coming out of the private sector and The first constraint and in many of your dimension is coming out of the out of the So the top concern for businesses are issues related to the banking sector the so-called the liquidity In the country created by the dysfunctionality of the payment Together with the complexity of getting access to foreign currency And imagine in a country, which is heavily Dependent In general Money is the fuel like on the economic engine and when you have bank closures difficulties to withdraw deposits The impossibility of using bank for international payments All of these are really key drug on the private sector You know, I just wanted to recall that the Soviet was conducted in October November So the situation somehow might have changed some respect by now However, from the discussion that you have regularly the private sector. There is one to constrain the So the international payments through banks that remain very complicated It's not completely impossible and this is both difficult both internal payment and And this is an impact on the on the business sector because many business rely on informal banking but also on the banking sector then said because You know, we know that There are certain type of businesses who can go and Conduct transaction either in cash or through the informal banking But there are certain set of business Interact with business partner who so they need to go to banks So what we have since so far I would call it almost a financial disintermediation So the financial sector being heavily disintermediated in favor of Now then the second constraint that we see from But that perspires when we asked them what is the constraint but also in other aspects of the report, which is unsolved Clearly when we collected the data in October and November It was very unclear how the political and economic situation would unfold What kind of policy the new administration would put in place and would have especially toward the private sector towards women And also what could be the impact on science and for example and all of these are the very very big on business confidence and business confidence as an impact on how businesses in that You know, we've seen certain things for example on sanction that has been more clarity You know, we have seen the general license being issued and this is at least taking away some of the concerns whether in a very Like uncertain economic context and the political context. You see that uncertainty has a big impact on the investment And you see at the end of the report you ask businesses exactly to tell us what is their outlook and so there is a big chunk of business they simply we don't know and You know, this is really like, you know in the in the do not know Okay, they basically adopt also what could be a way to see And then we see the torque constrained that I will not spend too much time on because you know, we have seen, you know Tobias and has already Put it very clearly, you know when you have an economy that is heavily contracting you clearly have a dramatic loss in consumer demand, you know, you have less You know spending by people Your people who have don't have access to their to their bank deposit, of course, you know this consumer demand as an impact And then finally you have the restriction on business for especially for women women both as business owner and Women as as workers and these also very much connected to the to the second constraint that I was mentioning uncertainty you know and The situation remains very very volatile because if you had asked me a few weeks ago I would have replied that we are really getting into the right path, you know Because we are seeing that especially also on businesses they were saying well We need to be to banks for example, they tell us well I mean we still have also women working with us of the restriction, but The situation is getting better But you know then the recent decision on on goals education really put like a big question mark Because you can see that we have a mix of problem They're faced by business and some of which are under the control of the interim administration some other in order to be a result they require also some resumption of Development work to score economic demand and some other aspects are a little bit exorbitant And it will take time to So let me start with with a little bit giving you a sense of for each of them So let me start with the force bucket what the interim administration could do Well, I would say I would focus on two options The first one is really how to reduce business and so in order to stabilize the business environment and especially keep doing More of what they are doing in a way Relatively well because if you look at our report we try to be really balanced in presenting what the business is Tell us there are two things that they have Interim administration is doing well one is ensuring the stability of security and businesses Especially men on business is unfortunately only but especially on the men on business. They say well Finally, we see like security that is very positive and the second thing called the corruption You know, we you know we saw the business is dealing with Customs and they basically you see that Corruption and customers are dramatically reduced almost So keep doing that one this is very important and The second day I mean the government can also do stuff in order to stimulate the man I mean, you know Bill and Tobias were mentioning me And also I did we're saying well, you know paying regularly the teacher paying regular the civil servants This is really might have a might go a long way especially in reducing the economic crisis in the city so that are Affected by the civil servants Of course, you know restarting also some projects. I mean that is gonna be very important What can then in this sense the international community do I mean as you again, we have seen it in the Development update, you know Development aid was playing a critical role in the economy And even if you know at the same scale there is a need to reignite the economy also by resuming some of this project And the president the private sector is then the transmission channel for this project And then there are Action that I would say that are relevant in order to to be confidence and I wanted to stress on a couple of Elements, you know you In order to resolve this this crisis Taking it will take time And you let it take also consistent policies for example of when you know deal with the financial sector One of the elements that I believe is not Stressed enough is that one of the reason why we are seeing what we are saying in the financial sector is because you have Tremendous loss of confidence from the public No, we are basically people that are holding cash at home So banks cannot play a financial Intermediation role if people don't trust the banks they don't bring back the money So ensuring that there are consistent policy to build back the confidence factor likewise Still on the financial sector you see that we really need to rebuild the confidence from the International partners for the pro for the banks who are providing correspondent banking Also, so consistent policies also on the domestic side are also very important to Thank you much Andrea again a lot of food for thought both in the report and your Comments I'll resist adding of some flourishes and maybe hold them back for later because I think There are no shortage of flourishes that will be coming from Jeff Greco my question to you Jeff is You have your Hand on the pulse about what prominent Afghan businesses and business leaders Are thinking and doing and many of these? prominent businesses and their leaders are actually basically at least regional level multinational corporations in both their activities and their investments so Looking at this group, which is very important I would argue both for building confidence as Andreas was saying and and also for the actual investments and business activities that they do What do they see as the couple of three or four main problems facing them at Present and what would it take for such businesses which are actually, you know Rather competitive businesses and in my view would come back before that the purely foreign businesses come back to I guess and what what would it take for them to increase their investment in Afghanistan? Okay, thank you bill Thanks to us IP does gotten bill for hosting today's meeting and I want to thank the World Bank team For the both the rapid survey and the Afghanistan development update our members represent Afghan business leaders afghan-american businessmen and women Canadian UK UAE Turkey we have members from all of the Afghan diaspora and business leaders And we have some of them here in the audience today as well, so we have a pretty broad sampling of people That have very strong feelings on what the private sector should be doing right now and what's what's happening to it I'm just back from meetings that we had in Turkey Where the estimates of the businessmen that are now moved to Turkey full-time is that they now have between five and eight Billion dollars of money moved out of Afghanistan now invested in Turkey in banks And they're starting their own operating trading businesses out of Turkey Turkey's a very export incentive-driven country If you're an afghan trader and you do a million dollars in export revenue in Turkey You get a blue passport from Turkey, which is the highest rank Passport in the country and you're treated very differently. Afghans are very focused already. They're the most resilient I think business people in the world because they've been through every possible Nightmare to survive as private sector partners The survey from all of our members perspectives is very accurate The surveys result even though it was two months ago or three months ago now, maybe even longer now But the results of it are still ongoing and I'm not going to go into that in great detail But let me just summarize where our community our business community on Afghanistan feels they're at Frankly, they're on the verge of collapse Some of it is our fault in the donor community and in the West some of it is the Taliban's fault Going forward and I'll talk a little bit about this in a second But we have to also be worried now in the the massive UN-led response to Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis We in effect now are basically squeezing out the private sector Because only the UN agencies are implementing with NGO partners at the local level and there is no private sector Participation even though we've been calling for it so that we don't let supply chain systems transportation systems Pharmaceutical and vaccine delivery system things that the private sector can do with her and go away because the UN is creating a second Economy in the country. We're very worried about that and our businessmen are very worried about it. Deborah Lyons the head of Unama Said in her speech to the Security Council on the renewal of Unama's mandate If you read her speech very carefully She said to the Security Council in spite of this unbelievable humanitarian crisis They're going through that is not the priority the priorities to get the private economy moving because if that dies There's nothing that we'll be able to do to stop the country from falling further even with a massive humanitarian effort to feed and and Vaccinate people and so forth. We want the private sector supply chain She said we want exports and imports to be functioning It's a trading economy and they're not able to do trade finance So from our perspective as business people the number one challenge we face now is the stabilization of the commercial banking system in Afghanistan So we've put out a memorandum We've done three memorandum since the Talibs took over on the banking issue and we keep updating it All the Afghan banks are members of our organization and they're very active in our banking and finance working group They have very strong feelings on what needs to be done first Solution they feel is to inject liquidity into the banking system immediately by unfreezing or Returning approximately two billion dollars in depositor funds from the banks that were held by beneficiary account holders by those banks and Are now frozen? Approximately 900 million in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and another 900 million in Europe Frozen right now both under us and UN sanctions That is separate from the foreign exchange reserves So when we hear the 9.7 billion number that's incorporating both the freeze of the bank assets But also the freeze of the foreign exchange reserves of dabs the central bank of Afghanistan The Afghan businessmen want that liquidity released, but they're not stupid They don't want it released in bulk and I think in my talks with our government the United States government on this They agree which should be done incrementally perhaps month by month Returning bank by bank Depositor by depositor their funds so they have access to it We as donors for 20 years trained an economy to put money not under their mattress But into a bank for safekeeping and that it would always be protected in the bank And now we come after the government is overthrown and tell them that they can't have that money anymore You can understand how I rate you might be as a businessman in a trading economy where you have to have trade finance Or you can't export or import anything and they're worried about their families dying not having access to food They can't go and import food to the country because of these frozen assets solution to We have to improve the access to liquidity for the banks and for the Afghan businessmen By launching the new which we're very honored that the World Bank has that has helped lead this the new humanitarian exchange facility HEF this will be managed we think or co-managed by the World Bank and and maybe UN in some role Going forward. We don't want this to be a permanent facility We think it's absolutely necessary to get some way to get cash into the country through some mechanism Get Afghani circulating in the economy to stabilize the currency and get dollars Delivered from the donors when they need to inside the country for programming the HEF I think will play a very important role We'd like to have a sunset provision of 12 months on it because we don't want the HEF to replace the banking system That we're trying to save right now as well solution 3 We want to fix the cash transfer problems by re-appointing a corresponding bank or what we call an intermediary bank for Afghanistan City Bank resigned in January for a lot of reasons But I think the main reason is that they determined or their board determined that the risk exposure the algorithms that they use to determine risk Became too great and for the small amount of money They make about 1% or less on each transaction for the country That amount of money very quickly goes away with the risk analysis that worsens after a Taliban takeover And I think also the fact that our Treasury Department and OFAC issued so many licenses It scared the bank and it made them feel Are we going to be in a way in a way to be able to judge whether or not any Transaction that we're approving for trade export import or even for an investment related by transaction That we're sure that it's going to fit within these licenses. It became too overbearing. I think for them as well We'd like to have either European Bank like Commerce Bank of Germany or at Crown Agents Bank of the UK is currently doing transactions with AIB But in a very limited way We'd like to see this functionality restored and there are things and in our memorandum to the donors and to the US Government we identify ways that the US government could be doing a lot more to bring a bank back into this role through indemnification and other activities solution for We'd like to increase the functionality of the Islamic Bank banking system We'd like to have a major state partner with UAE Islamic Bank or perhaps the organization of Islamic cooperation Which the Biden administration is actively right now engaged with on helping on Afghanistan? We'd like to have the Islamic Banking component given more credibility and given some role in the future Because we don't just want to have one vehicle by which to move money in and out of the country There should be other licensed vehicles That'll still be within the Swift compliance regime And we're very careful to talk about this because the businessmen say they're being approached regularly now by Chinese State-owned enterprises who are asking them we can take you out of the whole Swift system and give you loans and grants For financing if you want it, we're happy to help you to do that So there's already an enemy of what I think is where we want the Afghans to go on on international finance They want to take them out of the system entirely last solution and last comment as we'd like to see more cooperation between the u.s. Treasury Department and the Afghan central bank dabs both on the capacity side Capacity development issues and improved functionality. I think before the Doha forum last month There was a plan I believe by our government the United States government To try to figure out a good way to do that and to come forward and make that happen And the Taliban blew it up by this absolutely ridiculous decision on reversing a girl's right to go to get an education We'll talk more about that. I'm sure later But we'd like to see Treasury and the Afghan dabs have a closer and closer relationship That can only build more trust into a corresponding bank that would then step back into the role as an intermediary bank for Afghanistan And I'll stop there Thank you Jeff lots of things lots of things there I would just highlight one thing that is also close to my heart When you have this huge humanitarian aid program, it really should not be in kind There should be cash or the even digital payments to beneficiaries and let the Afghan Private sector and commercial sector then import the goods the food Medicines whatever else is needed don't have UN parallel economy of the UN itself doing that and providing aid in kind I think this is this is almost should be seen as a no-brainer and I'm quite aware in the humanitarian community There's been decades of research and and policy Conclusions that in that cash aid is usually superior to in kind aid and certainly it is in this case because you have a commercial sector Let me turn now for I guess quick follow-up questions to each of the panelists and Keeping in the aid coordination Sphere, which I think is really important to bias trust funds to mobilize and deliver aid have really proliferated Since the Taliban takeover at least doubled in number perhaps. I think they're now at least half a dozen if not more Whereas certainly when I was in the bank and I think while you were there as well We kept arguing, you know, maybe at most to one civilian one security That's clearly gone by the the wayside So this this proliferation of trust funds raises questions about aid coordination and aid effectiveness including not least the cost What needs to be done to manage such risks and and especially I think one of the two elephants in the room one is Ukraine and the other one is This aid is even this level of humanitarian aid is not going to be Maintained and we can get into that further perhaps with Nahid But so with aid on a declining trend and this proliferation of trust funds How on earth do you try to improve aid effectiveness and coordination? Thanks Bill a great question and I think you know, it's worth thinking about this question again and in some broader context and some historical context Where I think some of the early experience with aid support to Afghanistan Provincial reconstruction teams large off-budget flows. I think there were some really important lessons learned there about how Having aid flow through multiple off-budget mechanisms can create real deep Political and governance and conflict problems over time It can lead to aid being captured it can lead to elites being empowered in ways that really lead to to long-term problems of state building or state functionality And and and and I think more recently what we what we learned in Afghanistan was that if that if aid flows can be Coordinated if they can be put through some kind of coherent mechanism that as Nahid was saying is aligned with the national development plan That can actually achieve amazing results and this is what we saw in Afghanistan. I think among all of the concerns and all of the Reflections about lessons learned What would what we need to recall is that Afghanistan actually achieved amazing development gains over 20 years Afghanistan basically moved from being a outlier in terms of the The very low quality of development Indicators to being around the average for a country at its level of income So so we really achieved a lot and that was by having coordinated national programs Delivered on budget and aligned with the national development strategy You had a national primary health care program. You had a national primary education program You had a national community development program with reach across the entire country And they really delivered very measurable results and gains So how do we get from this kind of fragmentation? Back to a state where we are providing aligned and coordinated support Especially when we may not be able to move through government and I think that's gonna take some time It's a challenging question But I think where we need to start that process is by having a very clear assessment of what the Economic stabilization and recovery needs are Having that recorded having that written down in a way that brings in the buy-in of the international community having a Program or document or a plan which basically says look here is where recovery is going to come from Here is what that's going to require in terms of public investment and capacity building and institutional support Going through a process that brings the international community in behind that plan and finally that involves Dialogue with the interim administration to make sure there's a clear division of labor in terms of who is paying for what Who is doing what when it comes to the implementation of that plan? So so I think starting with a clear plan that people can align themselves around Different financing streams can align themselves around is is absolutely critical and then hopefully as we move over time we will find opportunities to to harmonize fine synergies and perhaps Consolidate some of the existing financing mechanisms I don't think we have to go to the point immediately where we say there should only be one or two financing mechanisms What we need to do right now is align the spending around a plan and then let the comparative Advantage of the various involved parties reveal itself in implementing that plan Thank You Tobias good points. I just can't resist adding I think certainly in the early years we really actually did put our foot down and tried to avoid a proliferation of trust funds and we failed with the Asia Infrastructure Trust Fund But otherwise pretty successful and a couple like the counter-narcotics trust fund fell apart very easily And then there's the NATO ANA trust fund which didn't get very far, but actually used a lot of ADB projects as well, so Sometimes yes, I agree, but I think you know the best a lot way of aligning things is buy money, right? I mean that that's the most Strongest way to coordinate aid, but I will stop there and keep trying to resist my tendency to come in and thank you for your Your thoughts, but and also I think we'll stay in the eight coordination sphere with Nahid and as you know The recent donor meeting mobilized 2.44 billion of humanitarian aid pledges for 2022 I think Against the request of 4.4 billion which sounds low, but by by experience with UN appeals That's not actually bad They're often quite happy if they get 60% and plus then particularly because the Ukrainian war Intervened since the 4.4 billion request. I thought relatively speaking and relative to other countries like like Yemen which I think not only about a third of what was requested Afghanistan did well So in addition to any thoughts you have on aid coordination But should the priority be now now on trying to get more humanitarian aid or on the basic development assistance sort of that What the plus side of what people call? humanitarian plus Thank you, Bill. I think the first question on that 2.4 is We we have that that fund available There should be transparency and accountability of where it has been spent and how and sometimes in the haste of delivery and results we we tend to Wait for accountability which has repercussions and we have to be cognizant of that Second we we have all from from the World Bank report We be understand and also other reports that humanitarian is not enough if we have to think of recovery and also basic human needs it has to move beyond the humanitarian aid to basic services for example education healthcare basic agriculture and livelihoods First of all as as we have discussed there are many risks with only attachment to the humanitarian One of the market failure that we have been discussing disrupting private sector There has to be a plan as how this tendency towards market failure could be tackled second With the humanitarian of course there is standards But as we we know there have been some propositions for humanitarian plus under the garbo humanitarian Which is also falls into the risk of not adhering to the standards of the basic services and once you Extended to the actual basic services then you have the opportunity to look into the actual standards of how to deliver basic services Some of the issues around the basic needs also which which not many people are Pinpointing and I want to make use of this opportunity on the situation of children and women Humanitarian assistance and also given the current Limitations of mobility for women there's a huge risk of malnutrition and going back to the Deteriorating indicate health indicators for women and children that needs to be tackled with the basic services in needs But given that there are many challenges that comes with Going towards that direction first of all as Tobias I completely agree with him, but also given the overall absence of an absolute aid architecture for Afghanistan going forward Earlier we were arguing for more on budget spending now We are in the situation where how efficiently this aid can be delivered given that it's less than we had a few years ago We had different mechanisms of coordination now there seems to be Not not the specific one what That also represents the needs of the people and a legitimate government that gives the direction and guidance on the coordination mechanisms Second the risk of parallel programming We have seen this in the past couple of months with the same objectives being proposed by different agencies That that needs to be coordinated I'm not saying that one of them should do One only one agency should deliver, but the important issue is That that in terms of geographic coverage in terms of sectors and in terms of The outreach it has to be coordinated And also the financial resources should be allocated in a coordinated manner and very importantly as the use of approaches Systems and human capital network that has been established Let's also keep in mind That we have a history of Good national programs that have been designed based on robust assessments. We shouldn't reinvent the wheels and the Attempt should be to use them as much as possible Last but not least on the basic needs on the overall eight good architecture Let's let's pay heed to the conditionalities as well I think it's important for all donor international partners to to and have an understanding of common conditionalities Not to overburden institutions with too many conditionalities like in the past, but be result oriented be very specific and firm on on some of the red lines, but also In terms of sectors that what can be really achieved and beneficial and efficient going forward. Thank you Thank you very much. Just to illustrate some of these points about coordination. I would just highlight I think in the earlier as we did a study on public expenditure on basic health and before the national program was Consolidated the cost per capita among different donors and different delivery partners differed by a range of 20 to 1 and Similarly, I think more recent work on the cost of school construction Shows probably he might know better But something on the order of a 10 times difference in the unit cost of School construction versus, you know by different donors and under different arrangements and in as far as I know in all the Cases that you know the unit cost was lowest in the national programs I Don't know if we have any questions at all from the audience, but let's go through the last two. There are some okay good I'll start reviewing them, but Andrea realizing we're short of time and Jeff you're gonna make up for your overage on the first comment with your second one But Andrea, maybe could for people who don't really know exactly Briefly, I know it's a technical and complicated thing But but since the humanitarian exchange facility came up, maybe you could just briefly for a layman outline what's happening and and What would be the benefits? Thank you Thank you very much Bill and thank Jeff for for mentioning it also I mean, what is the the humanitarian exchange facility is basically is a temporary instrument that has basically that wants to address two two problems one Is the the fact that the the central bank is unable to access international payments and at the same time Imparantly also you have that what we would call a derisking from international financial institution that basically Created a blockade or a semi freeze of the corresponding banking relationship So what what does the humanitarian facility want to do is basically want to achieve that three objectives one To facilitate the delivery of aid. So these funds that are you know, they are outside So if you have dollars that won't and if you are a humanitarian agency or an international NGO that has dollars outside Normally you are wiring money in and the money was disbursed by a bank right now This simple process is not possible anymore because you are end up with two constraint One is the fact that you might have an international bank That doesn't process this wire transfer and secondly, even if you are lucky enough that the wire transfer goes through You end up in a bank in Afghanistan with a nice account with five million dollars but you cannot withdraw the money and But at the same time you have another problem Which is like the the mirror problem of the of the former, which is if I'm an importer I Have sold my products. I'm a businessman who has sold by the products in Afghanistan I collected the Afghani Normally I was going to my bank depositing the Afghani asked them to convert into dollars and pay for my suppliers This thing is not possible for the same reason that I described What do you want to do with the humanitarian facilities some kind of offsetting mechanism in which these two Flows can be offset to against one another What is the objective and an addition or interior objective that you want to achieve with that one? You want also to create confidence in the in the banking sector because you know the fact that the banks get money reflowers, you know Now yeah, this is basically what it is The US government has been person and We are ready to put it in like at least to pilot what we are really waiting with the some kind of green lighting from the from the central bank and basically one of the green one of the Elements of the central bankers to agree is that the money that is brought in into the into the system through the humanitarian Facility has to be somehow earmarked for the for those purpose So it's not a general deposit that is deposited in a bank, but the deposit that cannot be used for those specific No, thank you Andrea, and I think the The bottleneck actually that I've also heard is is now that the Taliban Don't understand and I also heard that the This this illustrates the need for engagement by international financial institutions, etc That basically the UN did not really have the expertise to actually explain the the system in ways that the Technocrats remaining at the Ministry of Finance Felt comfortable with so as good technocrats They're asking a lot of questions and I think that you know again whether the UN is is equipped to go into the Financial details of this. I don't know Jeff I'm going to hold you to a very short. I'm just going to ask you one question related I mean can the Afghan business sector play a positive role in Dialoguing with the Taliban in administration and possibly serve as a bridge between the Taliban and the international community Absolutely, I think we've already started doing that already. I just have the Zoom meeting yesterday with all the board of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment They are having regular meetings with the Talibs. They had an EU delegation in yesterday They have a UN delegation coming to meet them day after tomorrow on the banking issues So they are already serving as kind of a voice of the sector into the Talibs and into the interim administration We have major proposals that our business community has developed with the donor community that could be resuscitated quickly in agriculture and Regional ag exports in water supply and bottling and apparel Manufacturing and mining and energy development. All of these are labor-intensive jobs We could put thousands of Afghans to work very quickly Some of these were operational before the fall and everything stopped when they took over Some of them were in the works to be to be launched right around now And we think those could be brought in as well so there are a lot of things that the private sector can do and the Taliban are telling the United States in Doha and their private meetings that they want investment from the West and from the United States They want trade. They want to do things to get the economy moving. Let's call them at their word and try to do it Thank You Jeff I'm gonna follow up with now with questions from the audience which are most welcome and There's some very rich questions some of which like with the opium van getting into huge areas Which we could have another two-hour meeting on so but Jeff let me just follow up on that as People have been highlighting the Taliban appear to be doing better in terms of corruption And what evidence do you have for that assertion and how do you? Assess the strength and reliability of that assessment. I think I need your mic because I think you know mine's not working down Yeah, so our business leaders are telling us that approximately 21 to 22 percent of their shipments going from say Kabul to Karachi for export Are now going with no corruption So 20 to 20 to 22 percent is being returned to them as as profit on these shipments that they didn't realize before In addition, the shipment time to go from Kabul to Karachi now has been cut in I would say It's been improved by over 300 percent So they're able to move a container from Kabul to Karachi in days as opposed to having both the Afghan border police seek bribes as well as the Pakistan border police Even Pakistan now with the Taliban control has stopped most of the corruption. It's not completely gone There is some a Karachi port to move your stuff more quickly if it's vegetables and perishables But I think that tells us that the Taliban have shown that they can do things to help the private sector economy They're listening to the business leaders who don't want to pay corruption But in previous governments, it was basically writ of the palace and their leadership They're not doing that anymore to a large extent that we know Thank you. Yes, I think you'd like to follow up on that Andrea Andrea But I also want to add one question to in addition to that if you want to respond briefly first to that But the the other one is let's say that some of Jeff's recommendations are implemented of returning some of the reserves What what would? Wouldn't that just translate into more capital flight? I mean we had about five billion a year according to some estimates of capital flight from Afghanistan We you know before August and So so how would you avoid sort of? Improving the liquidity of the banking system, but just Basically all of it going into capital flight and not supporting domestic Development or domestic private sector development. So giving you two so I start with the easy one This is basically not following up. I mean on what Jeff was mentioning. I mean we're asking for evidence I mean I really from our survey you really get exactly that evidence and you really see the data that we get on the On the import export operation are absolutely striking and I mean and and as I've said you have an issue of a payment But for businesses, I really I don't know if it's as much as the payment of the time that you save and the fact that you Have the certainty as Jeff was saying if you have a container with fruits and vegetables perishable stuff That's really like either the fact that you have the certainty that you go to the border and it passes in two days Rather than having a sitting like for weeks. That is really very important now discussion of frozen assets that I think it's a It's a very complicated issue in the sense that you have both Obviously to a couple of things here one is that you have an issue of mechanics that is all is not just important What but also Jeff mentioned it how to because what you have right now? You are the fact that you have a central bank that is missing the link with the international financial system So it's not just that even if somebody were to say well, I want to release a certain amount How do you release it? Probably I wouldn't exaggerate to say that probably the only way to do it right now Would be probably by shipping cash into Kabul. Is it really something that we want? I mean, I think you gave already The right, you know the answer. I mean I really think that that aspect is very important. The second element is that And it pertains to the to the domestic system, which is if you have a system where depositors don't have confidence, you know giving liquidity to the bank But you know would only result in Really the deposits are trying to extract as much deposits from the banks and basically Shrinking the financial system in the best possible scenario could I mean that the reason why you have a deposit? deposit limit is because you have you had the run on the banks and In any circumstance not just in Afghanistan when you have a run on the banks what you do you have deposit limits So giving like liquidity to the banks before the confidence is reinstated I think that could also be very risky for the financial sector as well for the stability Thank you a very good answer and helpful. I'm actually going to ask a Somewhat technical question that came from the audience for Tobias and it relates to the earlier comments and also to the fact that There's also a shortage of Afghani bank notes in Afghanistan, which makes really interesting economic dynamics. So the question From the audience is does the panel have a view on the exchange rate regime? Is the current quote stability through rationing approach reasonable or better to allow free free-floating exchange rate Wow I think you know what I would say is I you know, I don't think there is an exchange rate regime at the moment You know, I think This working. Yeah, I don't think there really is an exchange rate regime at the moment I mean, that's how I would characterize it what you have is you have an intense shortage of US dollar notes in Circulation and then you have a fixed supply of Afghani bank notes in circulation And the central bank has no control over the money supply. All right, so it's not really fulfilling the function of a central bank And what that means is that there is no adjustment mechanism when it comes to the exchange rate. So while typically when you had a massive demand shock combined with a Financial sector crisis and and balance of payments problem You would expect depreciation very sharp depreciation of your of your domestic currency What we've seen in Afghanistan is that that depreciation just hasn't emerged Because people still have a demand for holding on to Afghani notes And there's only so many Afghani notes in circulation for them to hold on to so for as long as that demand for the Afghani is there There's a there's a flaw on how much depreciation Depreciation we're gonna see and and that exchange rate is not being managed through any kind of policy because they are not controlling The supply of the domestic currency So it's it's this weird Rigidity and and this absence of an adjustment mechanism And I think what's interesting about that is really what what that means is that much more of the adjustment is being forced much more quickly on to consumption So it's not necessarily a good thing at all because what we're saying what you would typically expect to see is some depreciation of the exchange rate And that would allow prices to adjust and it would allow Foreign exchange reserves to be potentially released into the economy to smooth that adjustment And you'd have a temporal aspect of that adjustment Whereas what's happening now is that that adjustment is happening immediately and you're seeing this strange combination of reduced demand and increased prices because the exchange rate cannot adjust So so, you know, I think the it's very interesting Thinking about how this this goes in future I mean, I I think the Taliban administration seem very fixated on the exchange rate as a kind of indicator of their competence In economic management, and I think that's not a good indicator at all I think what we would want to see is an orderly long-term adjustment depreciation of the exchange rate over time that would allow Afghanistan to become more competitive and Address what is a structural trade and balance it needs to be addressed? Let me start the bill. Thank you Yeah, very interesting points. I would Andrea reminded me that of course there actually are pretty significant cash dollar shipments in and I've sort of asked people in US Treasury Why don't you mark them and see how many are in Pakistan within a few months? but but but the point being that that also then In this odd way with the it's not only the fixed supply but apparently deterioration in Afghan currency bank notes Which even a couple of years ago? I noticed there was some in poor shape than others some hardly usable and that they can't the central bank Can't redeem those because it doesn't have new new ones. So yes, I think we're It's actually going back to a quantitative adjustment versus a price adjustment. We haven't really thought this out. So that was an excellent question Conscious of the time we we can go to to 1130 But let me ask Nahid. What was a very good question and maybe the easiest question of them all We'll see how can donors avoid helping the illegitimate Taliban regime while supporting the Humanitarian and I would add basic needs of Afghans Okay to be honest, this is something as as ex Policy maker or middle management or even as a responsible Afghan citizen. I've been Struggling with when you even talk about recovery of economy and or helping economy recover or delivery of basic needs You're an advertently Support a regime that shows no intent of Of helping themselves to be honest or the people But at the end the objective is very people centric With challenges still I don't think they're I have solutions for it at the moment, but there could be few Quick quick attempts for example one of them to establish an independent central bank for For easing the the transaction and payment Issues that also is very challenging given how how independent that can be established It needs a lot of technical discussion with experts on the central banking few of the functions that can be alienated from the current system and put under very firm control have to make sure that the Amal and safety functions are there and in some of the monetary policy frameworks on the national program inside for example, I'm and I this is really unfortunate that today after a few years I'm sitting here and not supporting the on budget in national national systems few years ago We were insisting on adhering to national systems, but right now because of the unfortunate situation where we are I have to say that some of them can be decoupled from the national systems put outside the systems where there's no control of Taliban interference But maintaining the basic and infrastructure for example the softwares the human capital as we've talked about the standards So it can be When when there's a time it can be shifted back to a systems without much interruptions I think these could be some some examples of the attempts that what can make to deliver these these needs but Avoid any sort of interference but again this this needs to be done under under very tight control and Monitoring by everyone And giving the civil society and experts of voice For technical discussions. Thank you Thank you. I Realize we're now getting the point with each answer to a question. We're generating more questions Which I I think is a testimony that it's a lively discussion and the audience is interested So I think I'm going to respond myself quickly to a couple of them And then I think we do have to close at 11 30 So I'd like to give each panelist an opportunity for for the final further to give the final word so Very quickly on a couple of them. What is the reason behind the Taliban's ban on Papi? We don't know but What we do know because the second part of the question is what is the impact on the economy that this is a crazy policy at the Worst possible time hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers and households depend on opium now I'm obviously it's not good for the country to depend on on this Illegal crop in the long run, but in the short run when the economy has taken already as to bias and the development update Is it has shown a huge hit and with the reduction of about a third? You're really going to to put hundreds of thousands of Afghan rural households out of business. It's so one can speculate about the motivation and I won't get into that but it again is a sign of the I Think the Taliban administration's lack of of savvy on some of these economic Policy issues and the macro economy and I would add to what Nahid said. Why not have an a Technocratic central bank governor. Why pick a Taliban figure leader who is Individually sanctioned for I believe for that job and similar. I think the Ministry of Finance is also sanctioned So it'd be very easy not well who knows how in their internal deliberations But these are technocratic areas where there's not that much ideology involved and it's so in my opinion It's disappointing that they don't have technocrats Prominently involved in some of these key economic management initiatives strengthening agriculture One long-term issue is is the scarce resources water So I would just highlight there and I think it's actually one of the shortcomings of the international Intervention that in 20 years there were not really major water conservancy developments I think as July has said there's less irrigated area an effective irrigated area in Afghanistan than in the 1970s and that I think is a severe indictment of the international assistance then On China and other regional countries. This is interesting The experience we've had over the last 20 years is that Uh They they do, you know, there's remarkably little and I think it's also been remarkable and I'm sure the Taliban are deeply disappointed Not to be recognized even by their strongest supporters like Pakistan, etc but uh I think one point I would make is on the national programs and basic services and standards It seems like they're they're really not stepping up or let alone providing funds directly to the Taliban So there may be mining energy and other issues Yes, another person raised rightly the banking issue. I think we we covered it And another question on the uh, I'm throwing these out just in case Jeff or somebody else may want to answer some of them in this final Points. These are very good questions Uh, what about the telecom sector? How well is it functioning? Can private sector investment be attracted to that? The un parallel economy I would just refer to my earlier answer that you should be there is a commercial sector There are issues with the banking system, but they definitely can import and you know, there are food supplies in Afghanistan now The problem is people don't have cash aid to be able to afford the food and Yeah, yeah inflation so Why don't we go through some final Final comments and apologies if we haven't done And and particularly myself haven't done justice to some of these questions But they really are big and and important questions We'll go in a reverse order with each panelist may be giving two or three final points And we really try to close about 1130. Okay Um, so I want to focus on the Taliban Which probably will get me in trouble Our business community feels that there's no trust in the Taliban's word anymore The reversal of the decision on girls attending school Is a fundamental commitment that they made publicly They've made it privately And they now have backed off and reversed it and the donor community Will never will never relent on girls being able to go to school where they choose and how they choose So the Taliban need to focus right now on the confidence building measures So I'd like to throw out three confidence building measures that they should do immediately first reverse the education decision publicly and explain how This will how these rights will be enforced Secondly, we want our traders need access to to trade finance And we can't do that if the donors all feel that trade finance is going to be stolen by the Taliban or some political control over the central bank Stealing the transfers So we need to have public assurances And have a decision whether it's an independent dabs or something in a hybrid form They need to work that out right now That has to be something that needs to be done right away Lastly, we want to re we want them to reaffirm The amnesty for all the business leaders who left because they've repeatedly From the top of their leadership down have said we have amnesty now And at the same time they're saying and there are groups hunting down some of our business people Some of the other former government people still in the country and where they're taking them Sometimes we never find out sometimes they get returned and they're told they can't speak to anybody about what happened to them We need to know that the amnesty is real that business people are going to be allowed to return start their businesses With no interference and that the economic freedoms the market led economic growth that the previous governments had allowed Would would be allowed to be reinstituted so that the private sector can thrive and i'll stop there Thank you, Andrea Thank you I think you know along the line of the confidence building. I would just repeat a couple of things that I Already emphasized I would you know We really hope to come back six months from now with the next round of the survey because actually that's what we're trying to do To do it regularly to be able to have a poll so the situation And really see that both stability and corruption being like you know at the level that we we saw now And the other is Is on an institution building. I mean, I really think out of this panel today. We heard several times. We what we need is basically We are clearly like an independent and capable central bank, but also like a minister of finance I really think we don't I haven't heard it enough like, you know, because the role of the minister of finance and and I think that's fundamental Thank you, Andrea over to you. Nahid It's not working so There are In the report. There are some encouraging results on the Corruption and stability, but let's keep in mind when you're talking about security It's not about military prisons or bullets being fired, but we are also talking about human security There's a risk of exclusion of many people to access of services of firms Being treated differently and there are anecdotal reports which needs to be monitored very diligently also on the corruption Although encouraging but This needs diligent reporting and monitoring There's less eight less economic activities going on Which which might seem that there is less reports on on corruption But it doesn't mean that corruption has been curbed out There are still anecdotal reports of illegitimate Asks and that that needs to be taken into consideration second I think when we are talking about some of the red lines and conditionalities We shouldn't be We shouldn't limit ourselves to minimum of those services Education is important, but it's also Considered the quality of these services for example education and health that that we have to stick to we shouldn't reverse these those gains last point we have to move quickly on some of the Suggestions that are being made for the past couple of months and weeks because people need services And the prisons underground is very important to also look at the reactions of the regime and how it's going But also last which This would be last is there needs to be a political roadmap We cannot again discuss economy without the political settlement and way forward Even if you want to thank you I would thank you. I would Reinforce your last point about the linkage between the politics and the economy and on the corruption. I just to highlight This may be an evolving situation, right? I mean post 2001 corruption was relatively modest and then it virgined over time So as the Taliban get used to being in power, it's quite possible That that it will get worse and it's so better to nip it in the bud now rather than Let it get out of hand as happened post 2001 So final word to you Tobias Yeah, thanks bill. Um, look, I mean I'll I'll try to be very clear. I mean I I think I'm not sure how many members of the interim Taliban administration are paying too much attention to what we say about the economy But I think we need to have a clear view as the international community and I think we need to do three things Firstly, we need to provide basic support and humanitarian support in the most efficient and effective way possible While doing as little harm as possible Because this is going to be required for a long time no matter what happens This is a poor country that just became much poorer We need to find ways of doing this in a way that that really makes the biggest impact we can with with limited resources The second thing we need to do The interim Taliban administration are the constraint to a broader economic recovery at the moment both through their political positions And the economic positions. We need to make that clear to them We need to have a single line going to them explaining to them that they are the constraint and for that constraint to be removed There is a very clear list of things that we expect I think only by providing that level of coherence and clarity will we be able to get movement And thirdly, I think we need to be prepared to move with a broader program of economic support if that door opens to us So if the political constraints are removed We need to be able to know what we need to do and have a plan in place to move quickly to get it done That involves the financial sector and involves private sector support. It involves infrastructure and services But but but the time as Nahid says time is of the essence if we actually want to turn this economy around and move back to something like A stable or recovering economy. It needs to be done fast. So we need to be prepared. Let me stop there. Thank you Thank you, Tobias, and I absolutely the need for preparation is there And I'm glad to hear that different agencies are are working on things to to to possibly expand If if the situation warrants it look, thank you very much We I think the panel enjoyed the panel. We hope you enjoyed it and It will be available the recording and that can be disseminated further. So thanks again for the patient audience in the room and also for the Virtual audience watching. We really appreciate your participation. Thank you