Afghanistan’s per capita income falls by over a third

KABUL (Pajhwok): The South Asian region, including Afghanistan, is more vulnerable to risks due to impacts of the Ukraine war and continuing slower growth, says the World Bank.

In a half-yearly regional update released on Wednesday, the World Bank said Afghanistan faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

Pakistan had slumped into a political crisis and Sri Lanka a balance of payments predicament, the report added.

Meanwhile, a British media outlet said Afghanistan’s per capita income had decreased by more than a third in the last quarter of 2021.

“One of the poorest countries in the world has become much poorer,” Reuters quoted Tobias Haque, World Bank senior country economist for Afghanistan, as saying.

“The isolation of the Afghan economy following last August’s political crisis risks…leading to grave poverty, displacement, fragility, and extremism threats,” he told a briefing for the release of the World Bank’s first development update on the country since August.

According to the update, about 37% of Afghan families did not possess adequate money to buy food while 33% were able to purchase eatables but nothing more.

A statement from the World Bank accompanying the update said: “Under current conditions, the outlook for Afghanistan’s economy is dire.”

The country’s real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would slide by about 34% by the end of 2022, if the current situation persisted, the bank warned.

PAN Monitor/mud