The UN has forecast that Afghanistan’s gross domestic product will contract 20 per cent within a year following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, representing one of the worst economic meltdowns in history.
“[It’s] an economic contraction that we’ve never seen before, ever,” said Abdallah Al Dardari, the UN Development Programme’s Afghanistan head and a former deputy prime minister of Syria. “I’m comparing with Venezuela, Lebanon and so on — we haven’t seen such an immediate, abrupt drop.”
A UNDP report published on Wednesday said such a contraction took five years of civil war in Syria to achieve, and was expected to worsen to 30 per cent next year.
The sharp economic decline highlights the fragility of the Afghan state despite almost two decades of US-led assistance and billions of dollars in aid. The country was not strong enough to withstand the recent shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, droughts…
