New economic policy to be unveiled soon: Nazari

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Ministry of Economy (MoE) on Wednesday said hectic efforts were being made to provide facilities to domestic and foreign investors and ban all illegal commerce in the country.

Abdul Latif Nazari, deputy economy minister, told a news conference in Kabul today that the ministry had developed a new policy that would alleviate economic problems in the country.

Based on the new policy, people would be provided with commerce opportunities besides being supported, he said.

"We have depoliticized trade as per this policy. In the past, trade was politicized which was ineffective. There are numerous cases in which substandard goods were imported to the country based on the old policy," he said.

Women entrepreneurs are also paid special care in this policy and the government is urged to support the private sector, Nazari added.

Afghanistan is an agricultural country, so the new policy focuses more on agriculture, he said.

"In previous governments, centralized and decentralized economic systems have been tested which proved to be futile, and now we are using an economic system which is common in developing countries,” he said.

Nazari said that the new economic strategy will be announced soon and it would help increase exports while the imports would be checked for quality.

He said people’s economic situation has recently weekend to purchase goods but assured that the problem would be resolved by creating job opportunities in regional economic projects.

Abdul Rahman Habib, a spokesman for MoE, taking to the conference, said that the ministry had evaluated the documents of 134 non-governmental organizations and issued them licenses in the past five months.

The Ministry of Economy collected 1.3 million afghanis in revenue during the same period and deposited it to the treasury, he said.

mds/ma