Afghanistan’s economic collapse is one of the worst in history and will see the country’s wealth shrink by a fifth in the next year, the United Nations has said.
The speed of the country’s financial meltdown dwarfs recent economic crises in countries such as Lebanon, Venezuela and Syria.
National GDP could fall by 20 per cent in the next 12 months after sanctions and the loss of foreign aid following the Taliban takeover tipped the country into free fall. The contraction could hit 30 per cent in the years after, a new forecast from the UN said.
“[It’s] an economic contraction that we’ve never seen before, ever,” Abdallah Al Dardari, the UN development programme’s Afghanistan head told the FT.
“I’m comparing with Venezuela, Lebanon and so on – we haven’t seen such an immediate, abrupt drop.”
Kanni Wignaraja, the UN agency’s Asia director, said the sudden withdrawal of international aid had delivered an “unprecedented fiscal shock”.
She said: “It took more than five years of war for the Syrian economy to experience a comparable contraction. This has happened in five months in Afghanistan.”
