 Good afternoon or good evening wherever you are joining us from. My name is Scott Warden and I am the director of the Afghanistan program here at the United States Institute of Peace. USIP is thrilled to be hosting today with our friends from the World Bank, a timely discussion about Afghanistan's economic indicators and the future situation. We are going to be focusing on two recent reports that the World Bank has published on the current economic situation and I'd like to thank all of our esteemed panelists for joining us to give their reactions to it, interpretations and provide context. We invite both our in-person and our virtual audience to engage with us and with each other on Twitter throughout the event using today's hashtag USIP Afghanistan, all one word. We also invite all of you to take part in today's discussion. For those online please submit your questions using the chat box function located just below the video player on the USIP event page. For those here in the room, my colleagues will pass out index cards to write your questions on. They will come around and grab them periodically through the discussion and then distribute them to Bill Bird who will be moderating this discussion. We'll select several questions from among them depending on the time we have. As many of you know USIP was created by the US Congress in 1984 as a nonpartisan institute to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict abroad. We've been engaged in Afghanistan since 2002. We had an office there from 2008 until the Taliban takeover in 2021. But we remain actively engaged with Afghan civil society partners with those in the region, with those in the diaspora and those that are exiled to try to move toward a more stable, a more inclusive piece. And that includes not just a functioning economy but one that respects the rights of all Afghans including women. We have lots of programs that are aimed at both dialogue, research and training to achieve these goals. I want to just acknowledge and we'll hear in much more detail from our panelists that the two years since the Taliban have taken over have seen a drastic decline in the economic fortunes of Afghanistan. There are some good signs I would say from the analysis that the panelists have collectively done in terms of corruption and other technical management issues. But if we look at these reports, the overall numbers while maybe stabilizing show that Afghanistan's fortunes have declined significantly in economic terms. We'll be looking at the Afghanistan Development Update and the Afghanistan Welfare Monitoring Survey to explore that in great detail and see where the trends are heading. We are pleased to have two of the report authors here today, Sylvia Radele and Mohamed Waheed to summarize the report's key findings. They will then join the discussion with Naheed Surabi, Khalid Payanda, Paul Fishtain and our moderator Bill Byrd. We'll provide more introductions after this. First it is my pleasure to introduce Eduardo Olabiera from the World Bank who will provide who will provide opening remarks. He is currently the Program Leader for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions for Afghanistan with the World Bank. Having previously served as a Senior Economist at the Office of the World Bank's Chief Economist and he's also worked in the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central Bank of Chile. So Eduardo, the floor is yours. Well thank you Scott and good morning to everyone here in DC. Good afternoon and good evening to those connected online. It's a pleasure to be here hosting this event and thank you to Scott and Yusip for hosting us and having us here. It's a great collaboration that I hope it continues for many years. What Scott said, Sylvia and Waheed will be presenting two reports that we just published last month, the Afghanistan Development Update and the Afghanistan Welfare Monitoring Survey. So Sylvia, our Senior Poverty Economist will go first and then Waheed will continue on the macro side. These two reports are part of the Afghanistan Futures which is a collection of analytical work that we publish often together with the economic monitoring and the private sector survey, the gender survey and other sector analysis that we regularly produce for Afghanistan. That I think it's very useful to inform dialogues like the one we're going to have today. So I want to thank all the panelists here today for agreeing to participate. We're looking forward for a very engaging and interesting discussion and then as I said before, again thank you Scott for having us. I also want to thank our management and our country director for all the support in producing these reports. With that I leave you with the panelist and I thank Bill and also special thanks to Bill who has been a big driving force for this event and he will be the moderator of the entire panel. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy it. Eduardo, I pushed the wrong button. I'm an economist so please keep that in mind. Thank you very much Eduardo and also Scott for your remarks. It's my pleasure to introduce and moderate this distinguished panel to discuss two important World Bank reports, what they tell us about the situation in Afghanistan and their implications for policy. In the order in which they will speak, the first panelist will be Sylvia Reddeli. I hope it's reasonably okay and she's been in the World Bank since 2008 and is currently a senior economist working on poverty and equity in the global poverty and equity practice and she's worked extensively on issues related to poverty, gender, labor market, conflict and fragility in a variety of countries including Afghanistan of course. Mohamed Waheed and she will be talking about the household survey that the World Bank recently, the third round of it that they recently put out. Mohamed Waheed is a senior country economist working in the macroeconomics trade and investment global practice and by the way I think these people working in global practice are actually working on Afghanistan so it's a little different. The old system was you had more regional and country based approaches now it's a little more centralized I guess and he's done a lot of work on fiscal management, sustainability and domestic resource mobilization and I think he's not only been responsible for this update but also for the monthly monitor reports which I think a lot of people find very useful for the up to the minute data. Then to my left the three other panelists include Khalid Poenda who's a co-director at the Institute of Development and Economic Affairs idea and he previously served in a number of positions earlier at the World Bank when he was my colleague but also then in the Ministry of Finance and his most recent job there was acting minister of finance during the difficult days of 2021. And Paul Fishtine is currently a non-resident fellow at the New York University's Center for International Cooperation and he focuses on economic and humanitarian issues. He has a long background on Afghanistan and I think but I'm not sure but it's possible we met or overlapped at least in the 1970s working on Afghanistan so he's got a lot of the background and contextual knowledge. And last but certainly not least Naid Sarabi is a co-director at the Institute of Development and Economic Affairs and she previously served as deputy minister for policy of the Ministry of Finance as well as many other positions in the 2000s and 2010s. So in terms of process as Scott said we'll start with the brief summaries of the two reports about ten minutes each and then we'll go to a round of questions that I will ask the other panelists and then follow up questions for all panelists and then depending how that proceeds we'll open it up to questions from the audience. As Scott said the online audience can raise questions in the chat box and in-person audience please just write a question on three by five cards and we'll try to answer as many as we can in the time available. So Sylvia I mean we're starting with you because the Afghanistan's economic problems directly affect people and you've been working on the household survey for quite some time including the earlier rounds of that and I think the welfare monitoring surveys are an invaluable and actually in the Afghan context perhaps more reliable than many other sources of information about what's happening at the level of Afghan households and their members. So Sylvia what does the latest AWS tell us what are your key takeaways and concerns. Thank you. Thank you very much Bill it's a pleasure to be here with you today so as Bill mentioned we will start with some findings of the Afghanistan welfare monitoring survey. So when we talk about welfare monitoring we need to remember that in Afghanistan there was a well established system for measuring poverty monitoring labor market outcomes and welfare of households. So in the graph that you see on the screen we had like the last three rounds of the nationally representative survey that was conducted by the statistical organization of the country that one was conducted in 2016-17. The second one was done between October 2019 and September 2020 so the income expenditure and labor force survey of 1920 and then a partial one was started in June 21 and then it was suspended because of the deteriorating security situation and of course the dramatic events of August 21. After that we were in a situation in which it was not possible to collect data in the field so we basically relied on the phone numbers that were collected in the last two income and expenditure labor force surveys and we basically decided to conduct a rapid phone service just to collect some information, some proxy indicators for welfare. So the first round was conducted in the fall of 21 so immediately after the Taliban takeover so that was the round one. The second survey was conducted in the summer of 22 and the third round was conducted in the spring of 23 so that's the most recent round of the welfare monitoring survey. So in terms of household welfare an indicator that has been consistently collected over the three rounds is self-reported welfare so how households report on their own welfare whether they have enough income to satisfy their basic needs and what we see is that from the fall of 21 to the spring of 23 there has been some improvement in the self-reported welfare so in terms of the capacity of households to satisfy their basic needs with the income at hand. However, and this is what we have been doing with the round three of the survey if we look at the monetary poverty and we did some work to project monetary poverty and its evolution between the baseline of the spring of 2020 and the spring of 2023 we see that in terms of monetary poverty we still have half of the population that in 2023 is consuming below the poverty line which is pretty much the same level the same order of magnitude of what we have in 2020 and remember that the spring of 2020 was characterized by the start of the COVID pandemic which had a massive impact in urban areas of Afghanistan and in 2020 the conflict in the country was particularly severe so basically what we see currently is that despite conflict seizing we still have half of the population that is poor and we don't see any drivers of poverty reduction moving forward. Another element I would like you to bring attention to is the different trends between urban and rural areas. Urban areas prior to the Taliban takeover were really the driver, the service economy was the driver of growth in the country. Now we have stagnating poverty in urban areas, the difference is not statistically significant I will give some nerdy comments here and there but basically urban poverty has remained more or less the same pre and post Taliban takeover. We do have a decline in rural poverty but we do not know how sustainable that will be moving forward because what we know from prior the last 20 years more or less is that rural poverty is very volatile and it really depends on the realization of whether we know how climate change is currently impacting the country. So we do not have drivers of poverty reduction and the realization of rural poverty is really conditional on circumstances that might vary over time. So these are the main concerns that we have in terms of welfare. Now how did household cope with the contracting economic environment in the country? So basically they rely on the only asset that Afghan household had which is labor. Of course what we see and it's quite dramatic and it increases structurally increasing labor force participation compared to what it was prior to the Taliban takeover. There are more women and more youth that are entering the labor market to look for economic activity and employment opportunity. And it's important to note here is that the fact that more women are trying to do economic activity to support the livelihood of their household doesn't mean that they are working in formal jobs in the labor market. They are mostly engaged in economic activities, home-based production, mostly in manufacturing. However, what we really see from the indicators in the labor market is that the challenges that we knew existing in the Afghan labor market that of very fast population growth, half a million labor market entrants every year have been further aggravated by the fact that now more people are looking for jobs just to support livelihood. We have a doubling of unemployment and also under employment, the quality of jobs available on the market as the client as we can see from a deteriorating of under employment as well. Now we mentioned that we don't see drivers of poverty reduction moving forward. Of course one of the drivers is human capital of the country. If we look at human capital we have in terms of education and we are measuring school attendance here. We do see some positive development in terms of primary school attendance, particularly for girls in rural areas. So this is really the no-conflict dividend. From survey conducted prior to the Taliban takeover, the first reason for parents not sending children to school was the security situation. Now the first reason is lack of access. We see that girls in rural areas have benefited the most from the improvement of the security situation and this has led to a decline in the gender gap in primary school attendance and also the closing of the rural-to-urban gap. So we know that rural areas were particularly affected by worse outcomes in terms of education. So we do have some positive signs on primary education. On secondary education this is really where we see the challenges moving forward. Of course there is the dramatic impact of the ban on female secondary school attendance and we see in the spring of 2023 with this last school year is that when the ban really came fully enforced we see that only 3% of girls aged 13 to 18 are currently attending secondary school. This is dramatic and it's a dramatic decline to what we saw in 2019-20 even during COVID. So we still had like 17% of girls in rural areas going to secondary school now. It's basically gone. And the other thing that is particularly challenging is also on the boys' side. So amongst boys 13 to 18 what we see is that there has not been any change or any improvement in secondary school attendance and this is related to the fact that now young boys have to work to support their families. So we had talked earlier about the deteriorating economic condition in the country. So now there is a challenge of secondary school age boys that need to work to support their families and they are not going to school. So we are in a situation in which the human capital outlook for the country does not look so bright and this is an understatement if you want to say. So really so as Bill was mentioning earlier we do have some positive signs like for example primary school education. There is something happening there. And we do have some very negative side on the secondary school educations. In terms of welfare we see some improvement compared to the very dramatic situation in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover with the collapse of the economy. We know that the inflows of aid contributed to the stabilization of the economy in summer 22 and Wahid will provide more details on that. We know that remittances have also helped stabilizing the economy and helping household weathering the crisis. But we really do not see any driver sustainable drivers of poverty reduction moving forward. So it's a very fragile situation and I will now leave the floor to Wahid. Thank you. Thank you very much Sylvia and I think you make very good points and if I remember correctly from the report the number of people who don't have enough even for food is quite high. So even there was some improvement overall it's what we would have called in the old jargon the extreme poor may not have reduced much at all if any. So over to you Wahid how does this situation look in from the macroeconomic perspective. Thank you Scott and Bill and thank you USIP for inviting us. I think I take it where Sylvia left the welfare there is some improvement in welfare but overall economic situation is it has stabilized around a new low level equilibrium but it is not very optimistic going forward and I'll explain going forward in the next slides the fact is the as we all understood that after the crisis after the change in the regime the economics the government simply closed down the grant flows which were basically running the government the whole economy of one economy for the last two decades was designed around grant flows and sudden closure of those flows has basically shut down lots of things governments stopped went to payments public experiments were not paid and of course the border were closed and sort of things so there was a significant demand shock downward adjustment in the aggregate demand and that should have actually put lots of pressure downward pressure on inflation but in reality what we saw that inflation after the crisis went up because simultaneously there was a significant aggregate supply shock as well because the border closures the financial system was disrupted and you know there was lots of uncertainty and sort of things so immediately I think what we noticed afterward that since the arrival of you and cash shipment in December of 2021 things gradually started improving and some of the indicators which were just falling like stones they started stabilizing at a low level equilibrium in the summer of 2022 we noticed that the trade has started we the exports started imports were happening the Taliban were able to actually successfully restarted collecting revenues from the borders and they were so in that sense the sum there was some stability in the system but that stability remained very fragile because the economy was needs to go through a structural change and unfortunately for that structural change to happen it probably requires some support and that support is not there the private sector is struggling big time many firms basically were closed lots of firms which were operating they laid off lots of workers and the biggest concern that firms basically explained during the private sector surveys that were being conducted were that they don't have the demand for their goods and services and that was the consistent messages in three rounds of surveys so this is and then this clearly indicates that the aggregate demand was very low and the country did not had the kind of instrument that can help it in terms of stimulating the aggregate demand it doesn't have the fiscal policy because it doesn't have the active debt market where the government can borrow and can start spending monetary policy was ineffective because the central bank is this functional sort of so what we are looking at we were looking at at at the end of 2022 was an economy where the there was a new equilibrium much lower than the previous years economy basically in last to 2021 and 2022 shrank by 25% it was 20 billion dollar economy now it is 15 billion dollar economy and we were at that time we were thinking maybe that equilibrium will carry on for some time but this since the beginning of this year what we have noticed that this prices which inflation which peaked in July of 2022 at 18.2% started gradually this inflation started prices started going down but since the April of this year the we are what we are looking at is this in a deflation and deflation not at a very small level close to double digit deflation consistently for last seven eight months so this is a big concern that that clearly shows that the economy is still basically adjusting to the new reality is still adjusting to a new structure where the aggregate demand is much lower and the the there is no instrument available actually into prop up that aggregate demand so that is that is a big concern so because that basically tells us that if deflation continues initially of course it has helped people in terms of increasing their purchasing power that may have reflected in some of the improvement in the one of son welfare monitoring survey probably but if it continues then firms will continue to start laying off workers they will start closing the businesses because and that is a perpetual cycle and it's very difficult to actually come out of that cycle without a having any instrument at hand this is a kind of negative outlook that I just wanted to raise here on the something which we're working also depends on the outlook going forward revenue collection was happening Taliban were able to collect 2.2 billion dollars last year 2022 fiscal year 2022 this was comparable to 2019 numbers but remember in 2019 GDP size was close to $19 billion now it was $15 billion so as a percent of GDP Taliban collected more and perhaps it was because of inefficiency at the border and less corruption that was reflected in some of the service that were conducted by bank as well as the organization as well and but the problem is the almost 60% of the revenues are coming from border taxes and that relies heavily depends on the volume of imports and volume of imports are important indicator because all other indicators in the economy were telling us that economy is shrinking it's smaller but the imports remain very strong during 2022 and even in 2023 in 2023 for the I think for the first nine mother imports grew by 32% and that was the puzzle actually we were and when we were looking at the current account deficit in 2022 and 2023 we noticed that there is a significant current account deficit which cannot we never we didn't know actually where it was been financed actually so that was a puzzle for us but then we started looking at these import numbers and we noticed that some of the imports just just spiked and those imports are for example textile raw material chemicals tires vehicle parts confectionary items chocolates and sort of thing which does not actually you know tie up well with the very depressed economy and then we looked start looking started looking at the origin of those imports everything originated from UAE and that basically then we anecdotal evidence basically suggests that these are imports for Pakistani market financed by Pakistani entrepreneurs through a one transit trade using a one-parties so that basically if we adjust for those 1.2 to 1.5 billion dollars then what we were thinking that there was a current account deficit of 1.6 1.7 billion dollar and exchange rate is appreciating that sort of puzzle is explained that that you know the point 1.5 billion dollar close to 1.5 billion dollar imports were financed from the outside country and not part of the one foreign exchange market so but the negative side of it that Taliban basically received collected business receipt tax and customs duties on the one transit trade and those were the imports for Pakistan and now Pakistan bans banned some of those items from being imported through a one transit trade if that ban is imposed then the revenue collection at the border will go down going forward so this year for 2023 authorities have budgeted 210 billion dollar one Avani which is close to I mean in dollar terms it's difficult to say because dollars money and is changing every day but it's 210 billion F's and we don't think that it will happen it will our estimate is that they will be able to collect only close to 190 to 200 billion at best and that it does not board well because in a public sector we used to be on budget 5.2 billion dollar now it is last year it was 2.2 billion dollar and that is a significant reason for the contraction in aggregate demand there was 5.6 billion dollar used to be 5.6 billion dollar off budget in 2019-20 and now off budget is 3.8 and almost 80% of it is humanitarian which is mostly procured outside the country so it doesn't add much to the one economy and that's the problem actually that's and third factor which is important to note is that the ban on poppy cultivation also can explain some of the downside risk that the one economy will actually have to bear because UNODC report published few days ago shows that the loss of income for a one poppy farmer is about 1 billion dollar and 1 billion dollar in an economy of 15 billion dollar is significant amount so that also reflect the kind of deflation we are looking at so going forward with the fall in decline in the grants with the climate risk earthquakes that we are looking at and the lack of policy instrument at hand I think the outlook for the one economy is very poor I'll hand it over to you. Thank you very much I think there's some really interesting and important puzzles which the World Bank report tries to address data puzzles just to add on all that the data problems are manifest even there were there before 2021 and there's in many ways even worse now as I think both reports indicate. So Khaled you've served in numerous senior positions including the top position in the Ministry of Finance based on your experience and your knowledge of economic management what are the key macroeconomic policies issues currently and how can other countries and international agencies help ameliorate what are clearly very serious problems thank you. Thank you very much first of all thank you to USIP and the World Bank for this timely discussion and the World Bank's updates and and monthly monitoring that provides some insight to the end to the economy despite a very difficult situation when it comes to access and reliability of information. Most of what I wanted to say have been said more eloquently by Sylvia and Wahid but just a few examples and points that may be repetitive but important to mention first of all as I said you know lack of transparency and access to information makes it really difficult to see a full picture and but still given this some of the issues that I see you know first of all on Taliban's part there it does not seem to be any macroeconomic strategy or economic strategy and there has been a lot of rhetoric but nothing credible on the ground that would help what they have stated about private sector driven economic growth. International assistance as Sylvia and Wahid have mentioned have drastically reduced in size but have also been now different in nature it's from development assistance to humanitarian that has very limited economic impact so that has what used to be a driver of growth or poverty reduction has as over the last 20 years has suddenly disappeared which has created a lot of problems as Sylvia mentioned and the service but also other sectors that employed a lot of a lot of people including construction and especially in urban areas so jobs have been impacted there's poverty levels have been increased. Financial and fiscal sectors have had their issues on the financial sector the freeze on the assets but also the subsequent withdrawal limits set to manage run on the banks has meant that people cannot access the meager savings that they have in their bank accounts up to a certain level that has really impacted the environment on the fiscal I think Wahid spoke in and very much detail and I agree with all the points you know that the situation remains very fragile on the develop on the expenditure side there is no visibility where the money goes into there are no reports on budget expenditures beyond just headline numbers provided by by Taliban but on the revenue generation which has was seen as an as a initial success by by so many people of Taliban generating a lot of revenues I think it's not as much as actual improvement but you know a formalization of the revenues that they used to collect illegally over the last 20 years and bringing it into into the government coffers now and and as you see you know that that has run out of steam the issue with revenues is that it's most of it is dependent on only one item you know coal exports to Pakistan which has is not a great diverse strategy when it comes to to creating sustainable revenues on just to you know overall overview of the environment I think one of the key headlines that I take away from this is that the unsus successful political resolutions that do not lead to improvements in business and consumer confidence we have to look at all of this in that that context even physical security that has improved hasn't really meant anything substantial for consumers but also for for business people there are targeted kidnappings and extortions for to get get money from from those so it really does not that does not help the overall situation what can be done I think is a very difficult question to answer given the environment but I think it's not part of the the answer have to be Taliban you can't find any solution where international community could do something without Taliban's acknowledgement and active participation in their role as rulers whether we like them or not you know they have to to have a role in all of this but still for for international communities engagement I think for when it comes to economic management IMF and the World Bank have key roles to play I think leaving overall everything including economic management and surveillance to UN is not a great approach you know they have their advantages in some areas but you know there are key skills that IMF brings to the table and the World Bank brings to the table and I'm glad that IMF has a new mission chief for Afghanistan who's was among us today that hopefully there are more more engagements on on this so right now there is what whatever aid goes into Afghanistan you know unfortunately is not tied to a bigger macroeconomic picture that that is guided by data and analysis by the World Bank and I think in ensuring accountability to the affected populations is important and absence of a recognized government civil society that does not exist in Afghanistan there still have to be mechanisms found where there is accountability to them on where the money goes in Afghanistan but also to the donors as well agreeing to terms of aid and ensuring sustainability is important you know we've seen that Afghanistan is still heavily dependent on aid and and some sort of predictability is important and as I said you know earlier it takes two to tango you know and Taliban have to have a role in this and and a positive one to engage engagement with Taliban does not mean a recognition you know it's a but it's a recognition of the fact that they are the factors there and they have to be part of the solution if if the poverty situation in any way could be improved thank you thank you Khaled very useful comments I think to one takeaway for me is that the some of the improvements that the Taliban have made in revenue and in other areas border controls these kinds of things give a one-time Philip or stabilization they're not as Wahid was saying these are not drivers for growth or for poverty reduction and so they they've gotten some one-time benefits and now they're running into problems and I couldn't agree more about engagement non not necessarily financial and you know you have a problematic system where the UN humanitarian aid is driving the macroeconomic situation yet I think as Khaled rightly said you really need the World Bank and the IMF to be involved on the macroeconomic side and how to how to kind of manage or or address those kinds of issues which you know with the humanitarian side understandably is not equipped to deal with so I think those are very good points so Paul you've had a lot of experience in Afghanistan and I thought maybe you could take up some of the structural and sectoral issues facing the economy are there prospects where some sectors can provide more jobs and you may want to also touch on something which the reports didn't address because it was before that it was it happened after they came out but the forced deportation of Afghans I think makes everything that Sylvia and Wahid was talking about much worse so so regional policies are actually also contributing to problems you may want to touch that and and then if you want to say anything further about the donors beyond what Khaled already said you're more than welcome to thank you thanks Bill that's a lot to avoid getting red carded here the disadvantage of going after four or five articulate speakers as many of my points have already been made but let me try to hit on some other ones or some to reiterate and underline them in terms of sectoral and structural issues let me mention four of them one of them is the financial sector and banking which has been very well very widely acknowledged everyone knows about that but it also seems that the constraints on individual businesses and household really depends on the scale you talk to very small businesses who are managing to conduct their affairs through the hawala system this is not sufficient obviously for larger enterprises or for trade financing but for small businesses they seem to be get some of them seem to be getting by under hawala of course the authorities seem to be trying to bring hawala under the formal sector which I think is something the republic tried as well and we'll see how that goes there's also in the related to finance there's been some discussion about some of the private the frozen private commercial assets being returned to individual commercial banks under supervision I mean this is kind of rumors that are circulating this these are not the government the Daphonistan bank reserves but the private ones I think they're about 900 million and so if those are returned that that could help to boost the economy in some ways depending on who you talk to the transition to Islamic banking is either going really well or it's creating chaos I think the World Bank report referred to it as misguided so I'm not sure about that and then as Bill referred to there's another concern related to the deportations going on from Pakistan the Afghanistan ACCI the Chamber of Commerce and Industry has expressed concerns about assets potentially being stranded in Pakistan particularly if the finance sector and banking is not working there's certainly a possibility that some of those assets could be stranded there so that's one the financial sector external markets in trade some of the speakers I think Waheed talked quite a bit about coal as Holland mentioned despite the fact that there is no overall macroeconomic strategy the Taliban seem to be continuing this emphasis on export led growth trading economy again continuing what the Republic's focus was increasing exports has always been a work in progress the question of coal is quite interesting 2022 was really a bannery year for coal you had supply chain disruptions post COVID international prices were very high so the Taliban were able to take advantage of that and export an immense amount of coal to Pakistan I think the coal exports 99% of it went to Pakistan so clearly it was staying in the neighborhood that has not been sustainable I think coal is down exports are down 12% and so maybe the coal bubble has burst and that does not seem like a reliable source of income in the future also in terms of management it appears that I think the the authorities put a when they saw how much coal was going out and how much of a revenue source that might be I believe they impose some taxes some export taxes on it and that certainly didn't help to keep it competitive with international prices particularly after prices stabilize the third point is about domestic demand and some of the other speakers have talked about that household purchasing power is is now at a low with so much of the foreign funding foreign assistance going to humanitarian assistance it doesn't have the multiplier that development funding has and in terms of domestic demand surveys had shown that lack of domestic demand is really the number one constraint I think it was the the private sector rapid survey mentioned that the the number one to constraint an economic activity was lack of demand followed by uncertainty in the banking system so and the last one related to that is about the the labor market and the need to create jobs and that comes through very strongly in both reports and again that's even before the forced repatriation of whatever percentage of 1.7 million Afghans from Pakistan I think Sylvia mentioned the participation of women in the labor force create increased by three times I think according to the report which may not be a good an unmitigated good thing similarly with youth people are just poor they need to find jobs and they're entering the labor force the report also talks about unemployment but I think the report or underemployment the report mainly refers to people who are not able to get full time jobs or jobs that will will support livelihoods but there's also the question of underemployment with respect to quality of jobs and given the collapse of many of the the withdrawal of development funding a lot of the technical positions the the white collar or I guess white collar position professional positions have now been eliminated and so you have doctors and lawyers and engineers doing whatever they can in the labor market and so that that's a problem and then finally on the labor market regional migration which has always been a little bit of a safety valve for Afghanistan is not for the foreseeable future going to be an option do you want me to talk quickly about the some of the things maybe we'll hold the aid and donor issues partly for a nahid but then for the next round of questions if that's okay so yellow card and by the way the second round if somebody gets a second yellow card I don't know when soccer and football what's the thing so nahid thank you so much for coming I you know the last speaker always has difficulties but I actually think there hasn't been that much on the issue of women and households their welfare and poverty so I do think you know it doesn't look like Taliban restrictions will be eased anytime soon what do you see as the really serious problems in this area and what can what can you know is what how can donors allocate limited funds to kind of mitigate the damage I would call it I mean I think we can take as a working assumption the Taliban are not suddenly going to change their policies so a difficult question but please go ahead thank you so much Bill and thank you you site P and World Bank for convening this panel first I want to acknowledge Bill that just at least from my side there's a lot of appreciation for the World Bank report that the fact that it has been more comprehensive than the earlier one so as we go ahead there has been a lot of improvement in the way issues have been covered so really welcome that but at the beginning of also pay attention to some of the nuances that could affect the report and the fact that some people have reported improved condition let's keep in mind that when you do phone surveys you already you're contacting those who are already comparatively well off than many other people who do not have access to phone or even the fact that they do not have the financial means to have credit cards in their phone so maybe that could be one of one of the observations the second issue is also acknowledging the agroecology of Afghanistan is that different parts of Afghanistan have different seasonalities different living conditions crops and topography there's a lot of variation and the rain-fed villages versus the one that is normally irrigated there are villages that how that were comparatively supportive to the Taliban and now they are treated well in terms of access to aid ethnicity ethnic divisions play quite a bit role in the way you access aid and financial resources so these all have some kind of effects and impacts as we have we have been hearing from Afghanistan I wish we could have more gender desecrated data on poverty and from what we hear in anecdotal evidences is a feminization of poverty is a fact in Afghanistan and it is getting worse and worse the it is not the restrictive policies of the Taliban that affect poverty and women's activities but there have been reports that in villages and rural areas people actually self-police because of fear because of the environment that has been created women do go to get for example water they go to access health but not to the extent that were prevalent before again anecdotal evidences and I know how difficult it is to to to collect evidences in Afghanistan at this point there have been some mentions in the report and also I think other panelists have talked about it that women's mobility is constrained which affects their participation in other sectors of the economy in particular agriculture which was one of the main findings of the report and more towards manufacturing activities which is inside the house so what happens is that all those activities are highly underpaid less productive and they require more hours but less productivity and that affects the overall picture and how women are have been underpaid and another issue that that surrounds this sector especially manufacturing and in-house employment is as mentioned earlier lack of demand and limited liquidity at rural areas means women women's products are less likely to find demand even in an urban and in both urban and rural areas so some of the suggestions maybe yep when you look at women's livelihoods and economic situation you can't really alienated from the overall economic picture but again what has been at least some of the some of the notes while we have to emphasize on health and again in terms of access to health there's a lot of limitation on family planning and we have been hearing a lot of concerns over access of women to birth controls this wasn't an easy area even during Republic but right now it has been more and more restricting there has to be a shift in for more livelihood related interventions from the donor community I know there is limited funding even for the humanitarian sector but even going forward if you only focus on a humanitarian and really ignore the drivers of development it won't be sustainable I know there has have been some flexibility towards development lately among the international community but that that needs to happen fast livelihood cannot happen on its as an isolated activity of course Paul mentioned that there's there has to be a linkage to market driven economy and a plea to the United Nations agencies in the national community who are active on the ground maybe there needs to be some flexibility on your procurement rules to connect market and up and products in the whole humanitarian aid cycles there's a need for further coordination among women entrepreneurs both at urban and rural areas that has been there has been a big gap because some of the structures that were during the Republic are no more there there have been some activities but again due to restricting policies and lack of mobility this has been really an area that needs focus my last point again as a last speaker I don't want to repeat most of what has been said I'm a big supporter of cash transfers especially in this current circumstances and I will tell why the current outlook and the current interventions are a little bit biased towards main most of the cash for work projects are really labor intensive and they're really targeted towards men and youth especially male youth and main and it's highly challenging for women to to access even there have been some modalities that has how women can can take part within limited spaces but again I think culture restrictions and also restrictive policies of Taliban highly influence these interventions so the streams of there are two streams of benefit from the cash transfers first that the very bottom poor that are getting food assistance in terms of cash they can pay too many other they have been facing and the second one it helps economic activities of the larger scale and if people tell me the targeting of people through cash transfer is challenging the same challenge goes to the food transfers so I'll stop there since I got a yellow card thank you as long as people don't get two yellow cards which is the same as a red card in football if I remember correctly but anyway no thank you very much Nahid and I think you put a lot of policy issues on the table which is really welcome and helpful because you also put some methodological issues and I'll mention one briefly but I'm not going to ask Sylvia to respond to those because maybe you can dialogue but I actually think the phone interview technique may be less biased because if you're in a rural area especially now with the Taliban in charge having a young Afghan woman called the head of household and asking you know what are the women for example what are the women in the household doing may be a better solution than sending some strange man who's a surveyor and you know there's a lot of cultural resistance and not in all ethnic groups but in some ethnic groups to even say that the women in the household are working because that you traditionally that was seen as a sign of weakness and so I have to I actually think perhaps the phone the problem with the phone interviews which we will not get into so I apologize for that but it is how do you how do you expand that base because you're you're relying on an old base of phones but look Sylvia some of those issues came up and you may want to respond but I do think maybe just start a little bit with how you see the future going with the surveys because how many more can be done by phone before the it sort of gets way too outdated would there be something between sending Taliban surveyors to households and asking how the women are what they're doing in the household versus what I think might be a fairly good methodology of women Afghan women calling on a phone and also I believe they get a small payment so without getting too much in the weeds but maybe maybe go for what you think the future is and also any other points you want to respond to thank you thank you very much it has been a very very interesting discussion so far so quickly on the on the phone survey and the future of of the phone survey I think I think the phone survey was a response to the need to have information during an emergency right so now we are in a structurally different situation right so the Taliban as Khalid said are here to to stay for for the foreseeable future and there has been already some work done with UNICEF for example conducting a full-scale mix in 2022 and for the first time and numerators were able to go in all parts of the country so there was no need to replace some primary sampling units because of conflict for example we know in 2019-20 I think about 40 districts were not covered in the in the IE LFS because of conflict so there is a possibility to go in the field and quite frankly I don't think NSA will send Taliban to ask questions to household so I think like the technical people that are in this position have remained the same that there is a set of enumerators that have been used and also in Afghanistan there has always been a couple of enumerators male and female going together now there is an issue of for example on labor market is a very important issue there is some work done in Pakistan for example showing that if you ask female directly what they do in terms of employment that you report higher level of female labor force participation exactly for the reason that Bill mentioned that for the male perspective having a woman in the household working reflects badly on his capacity to provide for for the household so there are many issues to be taken into account so to answer your question where do we see the future I think we would love to have the possibility to go in the field and have a proper face to face survey we need to have a baseline for for poverty measurement covering the entire country we need to have the capacity to have subnational statistics on welfare we cannot do that given the sample size of our our phone survey we need to do more work also for the indicators that my colleague Wahid and other people use on the macro side we need to so we talk about prices declining but the the CPI weights are 2016 base now things might have changed quite dramatically or so we need to do new weights for the CPI we need to revise national accounts so we do need so there are like some questions that are not emergency related they really require a different approach to data collection one point on the on the feminization of poverty I think I think it's it's very important to to mention that right right now we are talking about monetary poverty so the little numbers that I presented earlier were about monetary poverty and there are of course also multidimensional issues in terms of poverty that are very important and here there is really where we do see this issue of of like for example mental well-being or other issues that are affecting women so yeah I will stop here because I got the yellow card right actually that's okay so I'm not a good referee one more point please go ahead maybe it's okay I come back later yeah I think there's a lot of food for thought and by the way I see there are a number of questions from the audience too so we'll try to move quickly to go toward there even though I think the discussion in the panel has been quite interesting so Wahid I'll just ask you one question maybe just particularly for the non-economists here why is it so bad that prices are declining and the Afghani is strong in this situation obviously it might not be bad in some other situations so maybe just briefly answer that question for for particularly for non-economists thank you thank you Bill so deflation actually what we are observing is the prices are basically in the inflation is in the negative territory consistently for many months in the short run definitely as a household I would enjoy it increases my purchasing power but in the long run actually from the supply side firms will basically start feeling stress because this disinflation deflation is coming from lack of demand so if demand is going down and the prices are in the gradually falling the firms will cut down their production and their business activities they will cut down their jobs further and that will perpetuate another round of austerity from the consumer consumer will also stop their procurement decisions now in the hope that in the next week prices will be further declined I'll go in next month and procure and that actually add feed into this perpetual cycle of and then that basically once you are into this loop it's very hard to get out of it we have seen the global examples and you look at the central bank what exactly they wanted the biggest fear they have is the deflation actually they even go to zero interest rates just to avoid that situation as well thank you Wahid I think this is a very important point about two or three years of this would make it similar to the deflation in the U.S. Great Depression I think something like that and it's actually crazy and I would add from a policy point of view the international community one of the first things they should be doing is seeing their sufficient Afghani bank notes and then talking to the Taliban about managing the currency auctions right if they don't if they sell less on the currency auction less foreign currency it should it should result in a depreciation I'm not suggesting wild money creation or hyperinflation or anything which Afghans fear from from earlier experience but it's crazy that the that the exchange rate went up from something like 90 to about 70 even even higher than it was when the report was this is nonsensical and now maybe that leads me into Khalid because you mentioned that the Taliban that didn't come out exactly right but what I meant was you had mentioned the Taliban don't have a macroeconomic strategy and maybe you could elaborate on on that and perhaps think about what what they could do what you know we always talk about what internationals could do the Taliban have some instruments right they're the strongest government probably in the last 40 50 years in some ways they they've demonstrated capacity in various they've benefited from the existing institutions what could they do differently in in addition to what I was hinting at of a more sensible macroeconomic policy sure given Afghanistan's economy the instruments are limited you know you don't have a central bank like anywhere else where they have different tools at their disposal but still you know I think the on the financial sector a couple of things that they can do immediately is first of all you know what Paul mentioned about the chaos created by Islamic banking taking over the the the banking sector you know I think a lot of work was done thanks to the IMF and the World Bank in creating I think world-class banking regulations you know and and the aftermath of Kabul Bank crisis replacing it without thinking deeply into these economic issues from a very narrow religious issues would be something I think that will push the the bank commercial banks that are barely you know alive over the over the years you know so the the first thing they can do I think a second thing that I would do if I were in their places invite international expertise and technical assistance and and the central bank you know agree to an independent audit to make sure that look you know central bank is outside the Taliban administration it's drawn purely on economic and you know financial sector regulations that it should be that would pave the way for unfreezing of these funds that as as Paul mentioned that part of it a big chunk of it is private money that is that is held on the a fiscal sector you know accountability and transparency you know Afghanistan had very transparent fiscal data for 20 years you know the best in the region one of the best you know when when you look into open budget index and suddenly you know you you cannot get anything on where the money goes I think that that that's important while the footprint of the budget is much smaller now but it still is an important tool at the disposal of Taliban to address some some poverty you know around half a million civil servants that have been gradually been replaced by Taliban foot soldiers still need assistance you know I think making regular payments to civil servants on their salaries is important it has been ad hoc and chaotic you know paying the pensioners that nobody has talked about you know it's it's crucial you know that that's somebody who has served 40 years and then they have no other means of income and they have contributed to their pension and suddenly they are not being paid as as an issue you know so some of these these issues on private sector development you know the issues some of the mistakes even from the time of the republic was that we when we talked about private sector issues we thought of big investments and what needs to be done but there is a big Afghan business community that that is that does not share the same challenges and international say mining company would would face you know their number one hurdle even in the last 20 years probably wasn't security you know on on on those terms you know there were bureaucratic red tapes that still exist you know that the number of steps that you have to go to to get a license or closing a business as a nightmare in Afghanistan you know so those those sorts of stuff access to to land access to electricity I think those those are some of the things that they could start with I think these would be my few first things to do. Thank you I think there's a lot of food for thought and policy options and issues that that panelist raised Paul I'm going to to ask about the donor coordination and what they can do to ameliorate the situation at the margin so even assuming the Taliban maybe can improve some of their policies what can be done on the international side okay that's an easy one okay first there's what can be done and what will be done and as we know as we sit here in Washington the the politics of Afghanistan are quite intense and no one wants to be accused of supporting the Taliban so there's that whole political dimension there and we could talk about that at length but I'm not going to but I think we have to realize until and unless there's some kind of change in Taliban social policies which as we've all said is not likely to be coming forthcoming it's going to be there's going to be a ceiling on what the international community will do as opposed to what they they can do so having said that there are a couple of specific things one is loosening the restrictions on financial flows and networks and that addresses the the the banking issues talking to people about the general license 20 the U.S. general license number 20 it's expansive but there's still weariness on the part of regional banks and firms to deal with Afghanistan because it doesn't explicitly say that if you do this if you trade with Afghanistan or you send money there you will not be held liable at some point so they do de-risking that's been discussed widely so I think making explicit and I think there has been some discussion about making some of the allowances under GL 20 explicit even though technically they're allowed now so that would be helpful I think Bill something that you've written about in various places and Nahid alluded to it as well is shifting the composition of aid to try to get humanitarian assistance which is less controversial and more likely to be forthcoming to use that to create demand to promote livelihoods and economic activities and Nahid mentioned cash transfers I think there seems to be at the international level of recognition that I think as you said that cash transfers are no more risky in fact in some ways are less risky than transfers in kind distributions in kind and Afghanistan has made great progress in some ways in mobile money and transfers so using the humanitarian assistance in the form of cash transfers and other mechanisms that promote livelihood also I think Bill as you pointed out before there's a certain amount of flexibility in the use of humanitarian funds that they're not strictly there's some whether it's humanitarian plus or basic human aids so that can be done and again that has to do with purchasing power creating domestic demand I think that's thank you Paul sorry I'm conscious we have some good questions from the group and so I think Nahid I'm going to pose one of them for you I'm sure you have views on the aid management system too probably at least as severe as Paul's and I'm very glad he mentioned about reinforced your point about cash transfers there should not be in kind transfers in Afghanistan and the humanitarian community intellectually has come across very strongly in that regard but it still doesn't affect the agencies so it's absolutely ridiculous to be shipping physical goods in most cases not in a prolonged emergency like Afghanistan if of course if you have an earthquake or something you need to get goods in quickly but but that model is not relevant so one question that came from the audience and I think maybe you could elaborate a little bit on it is are there opportunities for support to women running their own businesses and could that have have some help in terms of their economic independence and potentially political and social influence I think the easiest answer to that is yes but how do you do that effectively and I go back to my first to my remarks earlier when I talk to some women businesses their their main problem is lack of demand they produce even access to finances could be dealt in a medium term or but where do they sell their products is the first question they keep asking me from a medium enterprise who is functioning in mazar who's suing garments they have issues and challenges selling their products in market to the one who's trying to get procurement in Kabul or or mazar or elsewhere it's not that their procurements or their products are of less standard it's just that the procurement practices in Afghanistan right now with international agencies are too too biased and and it needs to change if you want to fix the economic situation on the ground so so that's that's that's that's one issue the other I think again in terms of access to finance the banking sector needs to have needs to be maintained in a way that they have more trust in giving loans and right now that's an area where there has been a lot of challenges so so I stopped there but if you wanted I could go on on aid coordination a little bit too well see we are beginning to run out of time but yes aid coordination and I don't know if you've written about it but I have and my view which I think I gave at the previous public meeting so it's nothing new is that the World Bank really needs to get involved in this because it's not the UN system is not equipped to do it and the kind of back and forth between different UN agencies those who have funding and those who are supposed to coordinate are weak and the ones funding are strong and and it's not a very good model so I would just repeat my last time public plea that the World Bank could get more involved and and perhaps IMF at least particularly with the central bank I'm afraid we're really running out of time maybe have some questions from the audience so I would ask Waheed to answer one of them and and Sylvia another so thank you and a very interesting question is from Sabram the question is which non-agriculture sector do you see growing since 2021 if any other sector services or or manufacturing 40 seconds now we need to take all sectors in the broader context and that comes to the point which Bill actually mentioned about the you know aid was necessary but it has some negatives as well and the way the aid is delivered in Afghanistan has consequences for example cash shipments in Afghanistan has helped country helped UN agencies in terms of delivering their mandate but it has created an overvalued exchange rate the exchange rate which does not reflect the fundamental economic realities of Afghanistan and we know all know that if exchange rate is overvalued you basically you are sucking life out of your domestic manufacturing sector basically you are supporting your non-tradable sector and the imports will be sort of indirectly subsidized and exports will be penalized so I think at the moment what we have seen for last two years there is a decline in all sectors 2021 2022 and Taliban for some reason they think that exchange rate appreciation is a positive thing they keep tweeting about it all without understanding that this is a bad for the economy and as Bill mentioned that of course the one way is to just they need to procure dollars from the market for that to happen they need to have local currency and that's where some challenges are because they can't print it domestically but that's where we are we don't have instruments at the moment and probably the bigger challenge is the authorities in Afghanistan doesn't understand what that what they need to do thank you very much I think without my having shown you the question you did touch on the UN cash shipments which are a really bad approach from anything except the most short-term perspective as a sort of emergency in late 2001 21 and 20 and early 22 and it's a bit frustrating to see that there there are plenty of ideas out there but nothing seems to be happening and again it may be this inertia of the of the humanitarian aid system so thank you you answered two questions in response to one so Sylvia there's a question I think that's directed at you so it's a it's a question on women employment and the loss of jobs of of of women so actually we do have an increase of female employment I think we would need to get better data in terms of the quality of of jobs we do know that women are not working for the government anymore meaning they are not showing up to the office but apparently they are still being paid so I think there is the issue of jobs not just as a paycheck but jobs as a way for women to be part of of the society to realize themselves and their potential so it's a huge agenda in terms of understanding better what is what is happening on the ground what we see in the data that there are more women working just because they need to support their families there is a an issue for the like educated high-hand professional women whether they have been able to maintain the quality of the jobs that they had before still women are working in the delivery of aid so that has been one of the of the red line of the international community for their engagement in Afghanistan to make sure that aid is delivered for women also by women so that is something that is really at the center of the engagement currently over. Thank you very much and I think we've all said and I think we all feel that these policies toward female education and women's employment are just disastrous for Afghanistan and there's no question about that the the question is will the Taliban do anything about it which I think is another subject. Paul and Nahid I don't know if you have any final 30 second thoughts we're running close to time I realize we didn't get to all the questions but I hope we answered some of them and if there is a minute at the end I'll try to address a couple that we the panelists didn't get to hear so Paul and then Nahid and you're okay. Yeah in 30 seconds I just want to kind of respond to something that both Nahid and Sylvia mentioned and that's about employment opportunities for women particularly Sylvia as you mentioned the educated and highly skilled class but I would also expand it beyond just women there's a whole generation of people tech savvy this kind of entrepreneurial class that came of age in the last 20 years and we don't see what they're doing now I mean obviously some of them have fled the country a lot of them have fled the country we don't see what they're doing now but they are doing something and maybe some of what they're doing they don't want it to be seen maybe it's safe or not to have it seen but you know you've had some incredibly creative enterprises over the last 20 years I mean afghan twists on adaptations like there's something called Mr. Kachaloo potato chips and buber which was a kind of a uber lookalike or act alike and so some of these people are still there and I think they're looking for opportunities to plug into support and there's obviously the market demand and all that question it won't create jobs at scale I mean we usually think about public works projects and cash for work it won't create jobs at scale but it will create some jobs and it will also keep this class of people engaged and growing and I think that's something that we particularly for girls and women I think that has a great possibility thank you I think we're running out of time but Nahid if you have a 30 second intervention 30 second one on aid efficiency you need to share their data you don't want two agencies to go and provide support to one village please I think it's sad that we are talking right after 20 years of aid experience in Afghanistan second maybe we can do more about managing remittances I think that's one of the biggest areas that could be looked into as alternative to aid that is decreasing and that's up for policy further policy discussion thank you couldn't agree more and we could have a whole separate session on on aid management how it was not there are many problems before 2021 it's not clear that the eight community has learned much from those and it's different actors and different types of aid but similar problems you had a quick point Sylvia just a quick point to reinforce what Paul just said I think when we talk about gender I think there is a whole issue of male youth and how that we see unemployment for male youth is very very high the issue of secondary education for youth that will also affect women so I think we need to also have a like a broader thinking about the current status of gender issues in in the country over thank you and I really appreciate everybody's patience and the time there's one question about minerals and about the kush tik pay water project in the north the short answer which I'll give us as the moderator as minerals know kush tik pay is a good project and will help afghan farmers and then there's one more about corruption we didn't really deal with that and I don't think the two reports are focused on those issues but simply the the much reduced flows of money obviously must have reduced corruption and the Taliban it's part of their mantra and it's it's clear on on the trade side they've really cracked down on the on the customs and trade in other areas there are issues and there's probably a lot of petty corruption and extortion but overall I mean and the last point I would make is just give them time they'll be more corrupt over time too right I mean and I think that's something to watch out about it's something we didn't deal with when we came in in 2002 and it came back to bite us because the level of corruption left over from the 1990s was very low because there was no money and the Taliban didn't care they were fighting a civil war so there was really and I think early attention to corruption is good and maybe that's another message to the Taliban to watch out thank you very much to the panel thank you for the audience for being patient maybe we can just give a round of applause to the panel