When the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) took control of the country a number of international donors immediately suspended most of the non-humanitarian funding that constituted over 70% of the government expenditures. Additionally, about $9 billion in assets of the Afghan Central Bank were frozen, resulting in an acute financial crisis for the banking sector in the country and for families across Afghanistan.
Compounding the impact of this dire situation, the country has been hit by one of the worst droughts in recent years, significantly reducing food crops and water supplies in many parts. Reports show that the drought has severely affected wheat yield, cutting it by a quarter in some provinces. Consequently, the price of staple food has shot up even more, making even basic groceries inaccessible to most people.
Haji Mirza, has been a shopkeeper in Kabul for the last 26 years, is worried about the situation. He has been noticing a sharp decline in the number of customers coming to his shop over the last several months. Those who do come have also been requesting him to give them groceries on credit because they do not have cash to pay him. On the other hand, he has been paying higher prices to buy stock for the shop. "Earlier, some people would buy staple food items worth 20,000 AFN (equivalent to $225) per month but now they can hardly afford to spend 5,000 AFN (equivalent to $56)," he says. "More and more customers have been asking me to give them items on credit."
Ahmad Siar, a truck driver in Kabul, complains about unemployment and the spiking food prices. "Earlier my family could afford to eat a good meal at least once a week, but now we barely manage a good meal once a month. The price of basic food items has increased so much that people like me simply cannot buy them. Instead, we have been forced to carefully ration what we eat and buy only half the quantity of groceries that we used to normally buy," he says.
These are tangible signals of how food insecurity and higher inflation rates are affecting hundreds of thousands of unemployed Afghans and their families. Pointing out that prices of basic food items such as flour, rice and oil have almost doubled over the last few months.
Kazakhstan, the main exporter of wheat to Afghanistan, recently imposed export restrictions because of the conflict in Ukraine. The price of cooking oil is also on the rise as 60% of the sunflower oil produced worldwide comes from Ukraine and Russia. Since June 2021, the price of wheat flour has increased by up to 68%, cooking oil by 55%, fertilizer by 107% and diesel by 93%.
Afghanistan: People suffer as spending capacity shrinks and prices rise - Afghanistan | ReliefWeb
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