Fiscal transparency is a vital requirement for effective fiscal policymaking. Budgets, including their underlying fiscal forecasts, must provide a clear statement of the government’s budgetary objectives and policy intentions.
... Exibir mais + Credible budgets also require comprehensive, timely, and reliable data about the evolution of public finances, which enables sound financial projections. The extractive industries transparency initiative (EITI) is a global standard for enhancing transparency and accountability in the governance of oil, gas, and mineral resources (that is, the extractive industries). It requires periodic public disclosures of information about a country’s extractive industries. EITI also requires disclosure of financial data relating to extractive industries, such as reconciled figures of company payments and government revenues; revenue allocations and transfers; data on sector exports; and quantitative information about the contribution of the sector to the economy. Analyses of data disclosed through EITI, especially in countries dependent upon extractive industries, often enables the identification and delivery of key measures to strengthen fiscal accountability.
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Efforts in Afghanistan have sought to enable systematized data disclosures and simplify data collection efforts, given security concerns that often restrict movement and coordination.
... Exibir mais + In this context, the following governance enhancements are being supported: the new draft mining regulations seek to empower the use of data for improved governance and fiscal accountability; digitized systems of the ministry of mines and petroleum (MoMP) now increase fiscal transparency and accountability. Efforts are being made in Iraq to facilitate reliable data disclosures in the oil and gas sector. Such disclosures will enable improved stakeholder engagement and provide a baseline for analyses and sector reforms. The most recent extractive industries transparency initiative (EITI) report has provided clarity to stakeholders about vital aspects of sector governance, such as data regarding licensing, revenue-sharing and allocation mechanisms, revenues collected, the roles and functions of various state-owned enterprises (SoEs), and the relationship of these SoEs with the governmental ministries. When it comes to using EITI or other data systems for improved fiscal transparency and accountability, the priority steps for the future in both case study countries are closely linked to their respective priorities: in Afghanistan, the priority is to boost investor confidence, increase governmental revenues, and counter illicit revenue flows; and in Iraq, the priority is to expand the umbrella of fiscal transparency and accountability to critical sectors and other areas of government intervention, which account for very significant revenue flows.
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This report explains about the improving livelihoods and women’s empowerment among the ultra-poor in Afghanistan; expanding knowledge on poverty reduction in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
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This note provides basic analysis of allocations and trends in on-budget public expenditurein Afghanistan since 1389. This report provides an overview snapshot of public expenditure in Afghanistan.
... Exibir mais + The report presents analysis of: i) the overall fiscal situation and the extent of fiscal sustainability challenges; ii) aggregate budgetary allocations and expenditure trends over the proportion of public spending that is delivered on-budget; and ii) summary analysis of expenditure trends within five large key ministries (Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Martyrs, Disabled, and Social Affairs, and Ministry of Public Health). Analysis is based on expenditure data included in the BOOST public expenditure analysistool. The BOOST tool is jointly maintained by the World Bank and the Afghanistan Ministry of Finance. This tool uses expenditure data directly from the government’s Financial Management Information System (AFMIS), which is considered the most reliable source of expenditure information. Data from AFMIS and presented in this report, however, does not always fully reconcile with other printed documents. The analysis examines actual expenditure at year-end, rather than planned budget allocations. Data is reported using Afghan fiscal years, with the year 1397 approximately corresponding to the 2018 calendar year. Off-budget expenditure is excluded from the analysis.
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Afghanistan faced severe economic headwinds in 2018, with the economy growing by an estimated 1.8 percent. Slow growth was driven by two major factors.
... Exibir mais + Firstly, severe drought had a strong negative impact on agricultural production. Agricultural growth slowed to 0.8 percent as low snowfall during late 2017 and early 2018 led to the loss of grain crops and livestock productivity. Secondly, business and investor confidence deteriorated significantly in the context of elevated uncertainty around: i) the level and duration of international security assistance; ii) the outcome of upcoming presidential elections (now delayed until September); iii) prospects of continued or worsening election-related violence (civilian deaths reached their highest level since 2001); and iv) ongoing peace negotiations with the Taliban. Real GDP growth is expected to have accelerated during the first half of 2019, mainly driven by the easing of drought conditions and improved agricultural production. Intensifying political uncertainties, however, are expected to have continued to dampen private sector confidence and investment. Poverty is estimated to have increased and deepened. The rate of economic growth substantially lagged population growth, leading to declining per capita incomes. The drought negatively impacted livelihoods of many of the 82 percent of the poor living in rural areas, including those reliant on poppy cultivation (poppy production declined by 30 percent). Reflecting widespread hardship, drought-induced displacement reached record levels of 298,582 individuals, mainly to urban areas in adjacent provinces.
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An impact evaluation of the Targeting the Ultra-Poor (TUP) program in Afghanistan suggests that big-push interventions can dramatically reduce poverty in fragile and conflict affected areas.
... Exibir mais + One year after the intervention ended, consumption had increased by 30 percent and poverty decreased by 20 percentage points (from 82 percent in the control group). The intervention improved women’s labor participation in a context where gender gaps in access to assets and inputs, and discrimination in paid employment, are the norm. The program is cost-effective, with an estimated internal rate of return of 26 percent. These results are the first positive and significant impacts of a TUP program in a conflict setting, with larger consumption increases than those reported in TUP programs in more stable settings.
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The share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 but has continued to increase in many fragile and conflict-affected areas where half of the extreme poor are expected to reside by 2030.
... Exibir mais + These areas are also where the least evidence exists on how to tackle poverty. This paper investigates whether the Targeting the Ultra Poor program can lift households out of poverty in a fragile context: Afghanistan. In 80 villages in Balkh province, 1,219 of the poorest households were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Women in treatment households received a one-off "big-push" package, including a transfer of livestock assets, cash consumption stipend, skills training, and coaching. One year after the program ended -- two years after assets were transferred -- significant and large impacts are found across all the primary pre-specified outcomes: consumption, assets, psychological well-being, total time spent working, financial inclusion, and women's empowerment. Per capita consumption increases by 30 percent (USD 24 purchasing power parity, USD 7 nominal per month) with respect to the control group, and the share of households below the national poverty line decreases from 82 percent in the control group to 62 percent in the treatment group. Using modest assumptions about consumption impacts, the intervention has an estimated internal rate of return of 26 percent, excluding non-monetized improvements in psychological well-being, women's empowerment, and children's health and education. These findings suggest that "big-push" interventions can dramatically reduce poverty in fragile and conflict-affected regions.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8877 JUN 10, 2019
This report is the result of a collaboration between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank Group (WBG).
... Exibir mais + Repatriation or the return of refugees to their country of origin has been rarely studied, and data on their socio-economic outcomes is sparsely available. In such a context, the World Bank and UNHCR teams attempted to make good use of the existing data sources and complemented it with new data collection methods to better understand the patterns and characteristics of recent Afghan refugee returns. More specifically, the team attempted to analytically connect insights between different data sources to explore (albeit imperfectly) questions of selection among Afghans who remained in Pakistan and those documented returnees who returned to Afghanistan.
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Food insecurity and malnutrition are some of the most serious manifestations of protracted crises, which disrupt livelihoods and food systems. Over half of the Afghan population, approximately 16 million people, lives below the poverty line, a sharp increase over the last decade.
... Exibir mais + Rural poverty remains consistently higher than urban poverty, although the deterioration in welfare has become more widespread across the country. The high poverty rates represent the combined effect of stagnating economic growth, increasing demographic pressures, and a deteriorating security situation in the context of an already impoverished economy and society where human capital and livelihoods have been eroded by decades of conflict and instability. Food insecurity has increased in line with poverty and in 2016-17, 13 million Afghans (or 45 percent of the population) were food insecure (deficient in meeting minimum norms for calories). Of these, an estimated 3.9 million were very severely, 4.1 million severely and 5.0 million moderately food insecure, with a larger number and proportion of the rural population affected by food insecurity. In 2017-18, Afghanistan experienced a drought which affected 22 of its 34 provinces, exacerbating food insecurity, triggering internal displacement of people, and adversely affecting investments in the 2018-19 agricultural season. Changing climatic conditions, a growing population, and other environmental stressors will likely continue to have significant impact on food security going forward. The objectives of the analysis presented in this note are twofold. First, it provides an overview of how the Afghan population fares in terms of food security by providing in-depth analysis of a range of food security indicators during the time period 2007 and 2016. Second, the analysis enables us to identify contributing factors to food insecurity such as inaccessibility of markets and losses in self-production of food.
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Turquoise Mountain along with Label STEP developed a pilot project for women empowerment in the carpet value chain with the goal of providing income-generating opportunities for women by increasing the quantity of high-value, fair trade-certified, women-produced carpets being exported directly from Afghanistan to international markets.
... Exibir mais + This report presents: introduction; production and sales; women’s empowerment; close-out of activities supporting female weavers; summary of key results; key project activity results; and recommendations for export promotion.
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This brief highlights five key policy-relevant findings about food insecurity in Afghanistan prior to the 2018 drought. These findings are based on analysis of the Afghanistan Living Conditions Surveys.
... Exibir mais + Food insecurity and malnutrition are some of the most serious manifestations of protracted crises as they disrupt livelihoods and markets. Afghans have lived through foreign intervention, civil war, insurgency, and widespread insecurity for decades, severely disrupting Afghanistan’s economic growth trajectory. Over half of the Afghan population, approximately 16 million people, lives below the poverty line in 2016-17, a sharp increase over the last decade. Food security has increased in line with poverty and 13 million Afghans (or 45 percent of the population) are food insecure. Of these, an estimated 3.9 million are very severely, 4.1 million severely and 5.0 million are moderately food insecure with a larger number and proportion of the rural population affected by food insecurity. Changing climatic conditions, a growing population, and other environmental stressors will likely have significant impact on food security going forward. The diet of the Afghan population is not only inadequate in quantity, it is also qualitatively poor. Overall, half of the population has poor or borderline food consumption, highest in rural residents and 30 percent of Afghans do not consume adequate protein (at least 50 grams per person per day) from their food basket. Inadequate food quantity and quality can particularly have severe effects on the nearly 1.4 million children under the age of five who are vulnerable to malnutrition. It is important to put the timing of the survey findings in context. The latest round of ALCS was collected prior to Afghanistan entering drought conditions due to deficit rain and snowfall of past years. The impacts of the current drought are severe in some areas of Afghanistan and an estimated 2.6 million people nationwide require urgent humanitarian action to reduce their food deficits and to protect their livelihoods, survive until the next harvest, and prepare for next year’s planting season.
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The overall macro-economic and security context in the country since 2007 can be broken into two distinct phases, pre- and post- the 2014 security transition, when security responsibilities were transferred from international troops to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
... Exibir mais + This note assesses the welfare and labor market implications of the security transition for the Afghan population. It finds that: (i) economic growth during the pre-transition phase, while high, translated into welfare gains only for the richest 20 percent of the population, who benefited from greater salaried employment opportunities; and (ii) as growth declined after the transition, poverty increased sharply to 54.5 percent, and there was a significant reduction in the quality and quantity of jobs. Since the transition, the only sector creating substantial numbers of salaried jobs in Afghanistan are jobs related to security services. While it is difficult to pin down the role of the deteriorating security situation on welfare, there is no doubt that increasing violence and insecurity have contributed to dampening economic growth, and directly affected livelihoods and income earning opportunities for many Afghans.
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Three decades of conflict have left Afghanistan’s power system battered. More than half of the population has no access to electricity and those connected to the grid suffer from frequent, lengthy power blackouts.
... Exibir mais + Expensive generation is prevalent, and the country has entrenched poverty and stifled economic growth. The Ghazanfar Group, a leading private conglomerate, will build and operate a 50-megawatt gas fired power plant, known as the Mazar Independent Power Project (IPP). The plant will be located near Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city and a growing industrial hub. Once operational, it is expected to supply electricity to around one million people, boost the country’s domestic power supply and reduce dependence on imported power. The project will also result in the creation of almost 200 direct and many more indirect jobs. IFC played a key role in making the deal possible, bringing in complementary skills across the World Bank Group to ensure delivery on the project. IFC’s Transaction Advisory Services engaged early with a private sector partner, the Ghazanfar Group, and the Government of Afghanistan (GoA) on legal, financial, and technical issues leading to bankable project documentation. IFC’s Investment Infrastructure team acted as the lead arranger, working to provide debt financing for its own account and mobilize debt financing from other development finance institutions. Working closely with IFC, the World Bank provided advice to the GoA, including regulatory matters and ancillary infrastructure.
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In this policy brief we discuss whether and to what extent recent currency depreciation is a problem for Afghanistan. We show that: i) depreciation against the US dollar has been modest and driven mostly be external factors; and ii) depreciation against the US dollar is not significantly driving inflation.
... Exibir mais + Taking account of these realities, recent developments provide little justification for additional intervention aimed at stabilizing the afghani/US dollar exchange rate or any revisions to the overall monetary policy framework.
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Afghanistan ranks last of 168 countries in United Nations Development Program (UNDP’s) gender development index and has one of the world’s lowest female labor force participation rates at 28 percent.
... Exibir mais + Finding new income generation opportunities for women is essential for women’s empowerment in Afghanistan. Through the government’s national priority program on women’s economic empowerment (WEE-NPP), the World Bank is supporting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) to identify sectors with: (1) strong growth potential and (2) opportunities for women to improve their employment options. Women play a crucial role in the carpets sector, comprising 90 percent of workers in the sector, mostly in weaving. In 2017, the World Bank partnered with the GoIRA and the non-government organization (NGO) Turquoise Mountain to explore how the carpet exports can be stimulated as a way to strengthen women’s empowerment. Direct-to-market sales of finished carpets command a much higher price than either domestic sales or the predominant route of exporting unfinished carpets to Pakistan for value addition and re-export to final buyers.
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Hydrological and meteorological (hydromet) data collection and analysis in Afghanistan started in the late 1940s and mid-1950s, respectively. The hydrometric network expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, reaching a peak of 150 in 1980, and the meteorological network had a similar trajectory.
... Exibir mais + Two decades of war, however, brought instability and insecurity that reduced public resources, capacities, collaboration, and coordination. The institutional framework governing weather, climate and hydrological (hydromet) services as well as early warning (EW) and disaster risk management (DRM) services did not escape these setbacks. In 1996, Taliban forces sacked the meteorology office, ruining equipment and destroying over 100 years of weather records. Hydroelectric production nearly ceased as turbines were destroyed, floodgates blown open, and transmission lines brought down. The civil war and its aftermath led to the degradation of traditional observation networks, prevalence of outdated and inefficient technologies, and lack of modern instruments and information and communication technology (ICT). The absence of forecasts and weather information reversed years of development gains in farming and civil aviation operations. In 1998, an Ariana Afghan Airlines flight in route from Kandahar to Kabul in bad weather crashed into a mountaintop, killing 45 people. From 1998 to 2004, a major drought forced nearly 1 million Afghans from their farms and herds into metropolitan areas, impacting half the agriculture land, killing 3 million livestock, and seriously depleting groundwater resources in Kabul and the Kabul Water Basin.
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In this note we provide an assessment of the technical aspects of budget and discuss the implications of the medium-term fiscal framework. The budget document is technically sound and includes some significant improvements in compliance with international best practices.
... Exibir mais + The medium-term fiscal implications of the budget are concerning, however, with declining aid leaving little fiscal space for development and O&M spending over the medium term as security expenditures rapidly increase.
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