Kabul, (Business News Report)|| The World Bank has agreed to release $1 billion from a frozen Afghanistan trust fund for education, agriculture, health, and family programs.
The World Bank said the funds are a significant boost to efforts to mitigate the worsening humanitarian and economic crises in the country.
The money will be disbursed away from the official authorities of the Taliban, due to the sanctions that are still imposed on the Afghan movement.
Funds in the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund administered by the World Bank will be disbursed through United Nations agencies.
Sources familiar with the plan said that the World Bank’s board of directors is scheduled to discuss it on March 1, after which the fund’s shareholders must agree to release any funds.
The move follows the successful disbursement of $280 million from the same trust fund to the World Food Program and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to support nutrition and health in Afghanistan over the past few months.
The Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund is a multi-donor trust fund that coordinates international assistance to improve the lives of millions of Afghans.
The World Bank also administers this fund on behalf of donors, which to date numbered 34, according to its website.
A few days ago, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing the United States to dispose of $7 billion in funds from the Afghan Central Bank.
According to a statement issued by the White House, allowing the United States to dispose of these funds affects Afghanistan’s money deposited with American financial institutions.
The total reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan at the end of last April amounted to $9.4 billion, according to the International Monetary Fund.
This amount, which was deposited before the Taliban returned to power last August, is kept abroad, and the bulk of it is in the United States.
Meanwhile, the Taliban is increasing exports to save the Afghan economy from collapse, amid fears that the country will slide into more poverty and hunger.
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy foreign minister of the Taliban government, told a gathering in Kabul that humanitarian aid will not solve Afghanistan’s economic problems, and the only way to achieve economic self-sufficiency is to boost the export of local products abroad.
The country also imported most of the basic commodities in 2020, and the value of total imports amounted to about $9 billion. In contrast, the value of the main exports of agricultural products such as pine nuts and dried fruits being exported to China, Pakistan and Iran amounted to just over $800 million.
