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Weekly Press Review ? July 29 ? 4 August
Ariana set to airlift fruit exports to Saudi Arabia ADB pledges $50m for Afghan power distribution system Call for rethink in aid policy Globecomm Awarded Contract in Afghanistan ADB to fork over $25m for irrigation system repair Integrated strategy key to Afghan development Investors want downward revision of income tax rate Baghran valley improvements top $1.5 million Pak levy on flour exports to Afghanistan may be abolished Battery-manufacturing factory closed down in Herat Security, drug, funding woes hinder US rebuilding in Afghanistan Removal of 15% tax on wheat export to Afghanistan sought IFC trains women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan Food prices soar in Afghanistan Press Clippings
Ariana set to airlift fruit exports to Saudi Arabia By: Zainab Mohammadi KABUL, August 3 (Pajhwok Afghan News)
Afghanistan's national flag-carrier Ariana Airlines will start airlifting fresh-fruit exports to Saudi Arabia from Thursday. Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce head Hamidullah Qaderi told Pajhwok Afghan News on Wednesday 5,000 tons of apricots would be dispatched to Jeddah.
An accord on airlifting the fruits to Saudi Arabia was signed here on Wednesday between the Ariana Airline and the Afghanistan International Chambers of Commerce.Land-route exports involved several problems like transit and sea-port delays and non-cooperative attitude of neighboring countries, said Qaderi, who was confident the agreement with Ariana would help overcome those hardships.
Ariana Airline chief Nadir Aatish told this scribe: "It's just the beginning of the exports, which may be increased if the results are found gainful." Under the deal, the airline will initially charge the exporters 10 Afghanis (20 cents) per kilogram, a rate that could be revised later on.
Ghaffar Daudi, owner of the Daudi Company which exports fruits to the kingdom, pinned high hopes on the new arrangement of fruit shipments. With time, he believed, the fruits could be exported in a similar way to Asian countries, Europe and the United States.
Commerce Ministry official Sayed Hashim Saadat revealed more than 70,000 tons of fresh fruits and more than 80,000 tons of dry fruits had been exported last year by the landlocked country.
ADB pledges $50m for Afghan power distribution system By: Zainab Mohammadi KABUL, August 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News)
The Asian Development Bank and the Afghan government Tuesday signed a $50 million agreement on developing an efficient power distribution system in Afghanistan.
The government will use the fund, half debt and half donation, to create a large network for countrywide power supply. The present decrepit power supply system, benefiting only a small portion of the Afghan population, leaves a lot to be desired.
Finance Minister Anwar ul Haq Ahady said at the agreement-signing ceremony: "So far, power supply is confined to major cities? but this is just the beginning of a long-term project, which aims to illuminate all villages across Afghanistan."
The war-crippled country is currently reliant on emergency electricity supply from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan at a rate of two cents per kilowatt. Ahady promised the electricity purchased the two Central Asian countries would be supplied to Pul-i-Khumri in the north, Jalalabad in the east and Gardez in the south.
A new power distribution network would be set up in Sar-i-Pul province, north of Kabul. Cities like Taloqan, Khanabad, Imam Sahib, Breshnakot, Sarobi, Mehtarlam, Qarghayi, Mohammad Agha and Pul Alam will benefit form the project.
He told the ceremony the $26.5 million long-term loan would be repaid to ADB over a period of 40 years while the rest of the amount was aid to help Afghanistan reinvigorate its power infrastructure.Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan said completion of the project would take about four years and work on it would be launched in a couple of months.
He added temporary power imports from the neighboring countries were required at the moment, as the repair of dams and power plants was a time-consuming and capital-intensive task. Call for rethink in aid policy 1 Aug 05 By Kevin Anderson BBC News website
Bob Geldof has challenged the world to make poverty history, but some four billion people in the world still live on less than $1 a day. The organizers behind Live 8 called for the cancellation of debt, more targeted aid and the removal of trade barriers that limit African economies.
But leading minds in development at the interdisciplinary TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford have called for a radical rethink of development.
They argue that aid as it exists now actually retards broad-based development. It is not that money is not wanted. Ashraf Ghani served as Afghanistan's finance minister and helped secure $27.5B in aid for his country.
But he argues that $1 in aid rarely means that $1 delivered to the people who need it the most.
The flaws of aid:
Mr. Ghani and Clare Lockhart with the Overseas Development Institute in London are currently writing a book looking at how to foster development in failed and fragile states like Afghanistan.
Failed states are a problem. They cannot provide the environment to help their population climb out of poverty. And as been seen in recent years, failed states breed instability and insecurity.
But the current system of aid does not work and isn't helping these states and their people. They argue that time lines for aid projects are too short to accomplish much. Most aid programs are tied to the annual budget cycles of donor countries, but to be effective, they argue programs need to be designed with time frames of five years or more.
The programs would have an end point in sight, but the aid should be focused on creating functioning, capable states. Once that is accomplished, the states would be self-sufficient and aid no longer necessary.
And technical assistance - sending western experts to developing countries - has not proved a panacea in creating stable states that provide for their people. Mr. Ghani advocates intellectual exchanges between fledgling states and developed countries and also a program of distance education where students could remain in their home countries and still benefit from education at universities abroad.
This major investment in the human capital of these countries would ensure a new generation of capable leaders and managers, Mr. Ghani said. Wasted aid Aid can also distort local economies, Ms Lockhart says, pointing to countries where aid agencies pay doctors more to drive trucks than they can make practicing medicine. And even when aid reaches these countries, bureaucratic costs limit its impact and effectiveness. Ms Lockhart points to a project meant to deliver roofing timbers to the central highlands of Afghanistan. Villagers described how the agency in Geneva meant to oversee the project took 20% of the $30m for administrative costs, which subcontracted to an non-governmental organization (NGO) in Washington that took another 20%, which in turn subcontracted to an Afghan NGO that took another 20%. And then they paid money to a trucking company in Iran to haul the timber. Once the timber arrived, it was found to be of no use as roofing timber to the villagers. It was too heavy for the mud brick walls of their homes so the villagers chopped the wood up and used it as firewood. They have argued that a better model is to deliver block grants to villagers who receive the money only if they hold local elections and post how the money will be used in a public place in the village.
Mr. Ghani definitely follows the old charge of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. When asked by conference organizer Chris Anderson what scared him most when considering the future of Afghanistan, he responded: "You," although it was obvious he meant the comment much more broadly. But he said: "What scares me most is your lack of engagement." However, Mr. Ghani clearly has a different kind of engagement in mind than the system of aid that has existed for the last 60 years. Globecomm Awarded Contract in Afghanistan Arab News 2 Aug 05
Globecomm Systems, a global provider of satellite-based communications solutions, announced that the company?s subsidiary, Globecomm Network Services Corporation (GNSC), has been awarded a one-year service contract extension from the Afghan Ministry of Communications (MOC) to provide teleport services to carry Internet and Voice Over Internet Protocol traffic (VoIP). GNSC will utilize a partnering teleport in Hong Kong and GNSC?s global voice solution to service the MOC. ADB to fork over $25m for irrigation system repair By: Ahmad Naeem Qaderi MAZAR-I-SHARIF, August 1 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Asian Development Bank has agreed to fork over $25 millions for the repair of water reservoirs and small dams to help revive the decrepit irrigation system in the northern Balkh province.
Engineer Esmatullah Esmat, head of the Balkh irrigation department, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Monday the ADB had already launched a survey of small dams and irrigation channels, extensively damaged by decades of war.
"The survey of the flawed irrigation network is on the verge of completion. The system's repair will take a year," said Esmat, who hoped the project would yield optimum results in terms of enhanced agricultural produce and farmer income.
Irrigation and water supply arrangements across the country suffered serious damage during the past one and a half decade of conflict. Though watercourses have been reconstructed in some parts of the country, yet they have failed to benefit the growers because of tectonic faults.
Esmat reckoned in Balkh there were 18 water reservoirs and around 400 channels that needed repairs. Some of them have been built in a technically wrong way and others remain damaged.
Welcoming the survey and governmental plans to renovate watercourses, farmer Abdul Ghafoor from Nahr Shahi district said: "We are currently reliant on reservoir water for irrigation. The raw-mud facility is crumbling and its water level going down."
Integrated strategy key to Afghan development The Daily Yomiuri (Japan) 31 July 2005
Afghanistan has reached a critical turning point. Since the Bonn Accord of late 2001 and presidential elections in October last year, the country has taken major steps on the road to political stabilization.
But without robust economic development to provide the jobs and opportunities needed to counter extremist recruitment and a burgeoning narcotics trade, the country faces the real danger that democracy and a free market economy will fail to take root.
Afghanistan's strategy for attracting aid to fuel economic revival has been broadly successful. And in April the Afghan Development Forum held in Kabul pin-pointed the development of infrastructure, energy and human resources as key priorities.
However, the vital missing ingredient is a development dialogue between the international community--donor countries and development agencies--and Afghanistan's own planners aimed at drawing up an integrated national plan framed around the country's position in the wider region.
Afghanistan's comparative advantage is its position as a land link in the flow of goods and services between Central Asia and the Sub continental. To realize this potential, our highways and power lines need to be geared to growing regional trade flows and, in particular, to the needs of energy-thirsty South Asian economies.
The construction of the projected Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan natural gas pipeline, for example, will serve to mitigate India and Pakistan's pressing energy shortages. Similarly, a major upgrade of the road network connecting Afghanistan to its neighbors could see Central Asia became less than 32 hours drive from the sea.
Much needs to be done to strengthen Afghanistan's fledgling judiciary and draw up new legislation. At one level this will assist the standardization of trade regimes and reduction of trade barriers to accelerate the process of regional economic integration. At another level, new investment laws will be essential to encourage foreign participation in developing Afghanistan's resources. The copper mines at Ainak in southeastern Logar Province are a case in point: Delays in excavating reserves worth an estimated 12 billion dollars are largely the result of a lack of appropriate mining laws.
Poverty reduction and providing alternative livelihoods to counter booming narcotics production must remain central to the country's development strategy, however. Rather than relying on a suppression-centered approach that risks replicating Colombia's daunting security problems, we should be looking to the lessons afforded by Thailand's successful crop substitution program within the context of our own integrated development strategy.
Anti-opium wars in the absence of such a plan would serve only to entrench regional warlords, recruit new Taliban fighters and compel cash-strapped farmers to cooperate with already powerful narco-mafias.
Finally, capacity development, particularly developing human resources and technical assistance, will be key to accelerating economic and social progress. Efficient revenue-generating measures--badly needed to maintain and improve public services--also will be needed to underpin sustainable development.
In short, to assist Afghanistan to realize its considerable potential as a land bridge, the donor community and Afghan planners need in the coming months to meet and agree on an integrated strategy that recognizes and builds on the country's position in a wider region. The role of landlocked Laos developing as a land-bridge within the Greater Mekong Sub region offers an interesting model.
The failure to draw up such a common approach risks a descent into uncoordinated, piecemeal development that ultimately will not provide the growth needed to sustain Afghanistan's still precarious political advances. That would be a tragedy not just for the long-suffering Afghan people, but also for their neighbors.
Investors want downward revision of income tax rate By: Mustafa Basharat KABUL, July 31 (Pajhwok Afghan News)
The 20 per cent tax levied on registered companies will prove a crushing blow for the country's nascent economy ravaged by decades of conflict and will halt its march towards the goal of self-sufficiency.
This was the crux of speeches delivered at a round-table conference held at the German embassy here. Members of the business community, top-level officials, economists and cabinet ministers attended the event.
While representatives of the private sector pour their grievances vis-?vis the tax levies, government officials were quick to assure them of remedy provided the former come out with logical arguments regarding decrease in the tax ratio.The day-long debate on "economics, education and politics" revolved around the tax ratio, insecurity and role of private sectors in provision of job to new university graduates.
As per the new law, registered companies will pay 20 per cent tax on their net profit while those unregistered will be liable to pay 2 per cent tax on their total investment as well as net profit.
The investors went on complaining that the government had not taken them into confidence ahead of enacting the law. "They should have discussed the issue with us instead taking the unilateral decision," they argued.
Director of the Roshan Mobile Company Khwaja Karim said they had invested the biggest amount in the country's communication sector but the officials did not even contact them before introducing the new measures.
Calling the imposition of 20 per cent tax a disastrous move, director of the Afghanistan International Champers of Commerce (AICC) Hamid Qadri vowed the traders would resist the law with full might. "The government should support the industrial sector to groom instead of slapping huge levies," he pointed out.
Speaking on the occasion, Finance Minister Anwarul Haq Ahadi assured the investors and industrialists the government would give due consideration to their demands if found viable. He said they wanted the country to achieve rapid progress on the economic front and were ready to provide all possible help on this count.
Urging the business community to cooperate with the government in rebuilding the country's tattered economy, the minister said the goal of Afghanistan's self-sufficiency mostly depended on tax reforms.
The conference was organized by the German embassy in Kabul with the aim to establish close links between economic, education and political circles. Besides the tax issue, which overlapped the debate, the participants also dilated on matters like insecurity, role of private sector in job creation and education.
Baghran valley improvements top $1.5 million July 31, 2005 COMBINED FORCES COMMAND ? AFGHANISTAN COALITION PRESS INFORMATION CENTER
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan ? More then $1.5 million is being spent on civic improvements in the Baghran valley of southern Afghanistan in an effort to show the benefits of peace and improve educational opportunities for the people there.
The projects range in scope and size from an $80,000 renovation of a health care clinic to the construction of two police stations costing $300,000. The improvements will raise the quality of life and improve the government of Afghanistan?s ability to maintain law and order.
More than $300,000 will be spent for the construction of two police stations and a district police headquarters that will house district leaders and provide a base of operations for local police forces. Four police vehicles and 10 motorcycles are being provided to law enforcement officials in the area. The cost of these transportation assets is more than $125,000.
Four schools are being renovated, each at a cost of nearly $200,000, at various locations throughout the area so men, women and children will be able to have a comfortable place that fosters learning. Road construction, repair and maintenance equipment, at a cost of more than $250,000, has been purchased both to help encourage commerce and to improve the reaction time of local law enforcement agencies.
?These projects all show a reaching out by the Afghan government to the people of this area,? said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Andy Mazerik, a civil affairs specialist working in the area. ?New equipment for police stations allows the officers in that area to better respond to threats and the improvements to roads will help increase security and trade.?
Pak levy on flour exports to Afghanistan may be abolished By: Pakhtun Sahar ISLAMABAD, July 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News)
Pakistan is mulling the abolition of an existing 15 percent duty on flour supplies to Afghanistan in order to control market swings in the neighboring country.Dr. Salman Shah, advisor to the prime minister on economic affairs, said on Saturday the flour market across the border had gone sluggish despite the fact that Pakistan remained the biggest exporter of the commodity to Afghanistan.
"Our government will taken effective measures to bring back buoyancy to the once bustling market for its flour in Afghanistan," promised Dr. Salman, who hinted at either scrapping the 15 percent duty or drastically reducing it.
"If the percent octroi is a hurdle to the flour bazaar stability, we will certainly do a rethink on it," the prime ministerial advisor told Pajhwok Afghan News in an exclusive chat.
Meanwhile, a flour mills' association leader linked the weakening Pakistani foothold in the Afghan market to the 15 percent levy on flour exports. He called upon the government to realize the gravity of the situation and take steps to bolster Pakistan's declining position, which had been strong enough for more than half a century.
Abdul Ali argued Pakistan earned a lot from flour exports to Afghanistan but the tax ever-since its imposition had been taking a heavy toll on these profits. "One day, we will lose the market if the levy is not withdrawn," he warned.
He also demanded strict checks on smuggling of the staple food item to Afghanistan to save genuine millers from losses. Illegal supplies were a big factor discouraging authorized exporters, he concluded. Battery-manufacturing factory closed down in Herat By: Ahmad Qureshi KABUL, July 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News
The first battery-manufacturing factory of Afghanistan has been closed down after three years of operation - thanks free imports of the product and a flawed power supply system.
Haji Abdul Hamid Zory, owner of the Zory Battery Factory, Saturday recalled he had launched the venture in 2001 with a capital of two million dollars and technical support from Turkish engineers. His factory was making auto batteries of 60, 75 and 150 volts.
He lamented the closure of his project owing to low battery prices imported into Afghanistan without any tax and an erratic power supply arrangement. The anguished owner alleged two foreign firms gave a 20 percent discount for three years on their products sold in Afghanistan.
"But now that they have captured the local market, the firms have jacked up the prices of their batteries," he continued. Heavy-vehicle batteries of the two companies were priced at 900 Afghanis apiece as long as the Zory Factory remained operational. Now the rate has surged to 1400 Afghanis.
Abdul Azim Rahimi, customs office chief in Herat, contended companies could increase or decrease their prices to compete with rivals in the free market system. He pointed out the Finance Ministry was authorized to ban or allow the import of foreign batteries.
At least 50 workers were employed by the Zory Factory, which was spread over 30,000 square meters of land and situated just two kilometers north of the city on the Herat-Torghonday Highway.
Haji Jan Mohammad, a resident of Kandahar, said he had bought a Zory battery for his truck a year ago and it was a domestic product of good quality. "We should always purchase our domestic products to encourage local industry," he stressed.
The distraught factory owner said he had exported 4,000 batteries to Iran and Turkmenistan during the first year of his company's operation. He claimed his factory had the capability of manufacturing 200-volt batteries, something out of the ordinary in Central Asian countries.
"With 350,000 batteries finding their way to Afghanistan annually, the government will be well-advised in controlling imports. Such a step will help promote our own products. And an outright import ban will save Afghanistan seven million dollars a year," Hamid Zory reckoned. Security, drug, funding woes hinder US rebuilding in Afghanistan Thu Jul 28, 9:28 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP)
Poor security, increased opium production and delayed funding are hindering US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, an independent probe showed, criticizing the absence of a performance management plan for American aid projects.
"Deteriorating security rendered large areas inaccessible to the assistance community, and the continued rise in opium production undermined legitimate economic activity, said a report by the US Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
In said that last year, most assistance funds were not available until nearly six months into the year, preventing the United States Agency for International Development, the federal aid agency, from accelerating reconstruction efforts in the war-ravaged nation.
The United States is the largest donor in Afghanistan, contributing about 38 percent of the 3.6 billion dollars pledged by the international community following the ouster of the hard-line Islamic regime in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
Taliban loyalists have stepped up attacks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September 18. Political violence has killed more than 770 people since the start of the year, mostly militants, compared to 850 in all of 2004.
An 18,000-strong US-led coalition force remains in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban fighters, mainly in the south and southeast of the country.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, swearing in the new ambassador to Kabul on Wednesday, said that the US led coalition had transformed Afghanistan to a "place of hope and promise" from once the center point of the "arc of crisis" in South Asia.
Ronald Neumann, the new envoy, said Taliban forces were resorting to desperate attacks on soft targets but "they will not be allowed to undermine the continued rule of President Hamid Karzai's government or Afghanistan's progress toward a better future." The GAO report said Thursday that the United States did not meet all of its reconstruction targets in Afghanistan due to security and other obstacles.
For example, it said, USAID intended to rehabilitate or build 286 schools by the end of 2004 but due to "poor contractor performance and security problems," by September, it had completed only eight.
Despite its considerable investment in Afghanistan?s reconstruction, the report said USAID struggled with contract management and project oversight. In addition, USAID has not developed a performance management plan to monitor projects, nor has it focused contractors' efforts on developing project-specific performance plans," it said. USAID, the report said, "lacked a comprehensive strategy to direct its efforts.
Moreover, it said, measures provided by the US embassy in Kabul to decision-makers in Washington "did not comprehensively portray progress in each sector or the overall US program." Although a long-term, country-level strategy was approved as of July 2005, USAID operated throughout 2004 without a comprehensive strategy, it said.
The USAID said it concurred with the reports recommendations and indicated that it had made progress in improving its strategic planning and performance measurement processes.
The USAID has completed its first long-term country-level strategy for Afghanistan covering 2005-2010 period, the agency said while indicating that it has begun developing a performance management plan.
Removal of 15% tax on wheat export to Afghanistan sought Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 29, 2005
ISLAMABAD: The Flourmills Association on Thursday raised concern on the 15 percent levy on export of wheat products to Afghanistan, and demanded its removal.
The demand came during a meeting of a twenty-member delegation led by Abdul Ali Kakar, Chairman Pakistan Flour Mills Association, with Dr Salman Shah, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs and Statistics in the Ministry of Finance, on Thursday.
The issue of the rising price of atta was discussed in the meeting. The association raised various issues during the meeting including levy of 15% tax on export of wheat products to Afghanistan, quarantine inspection/testing of imported wheat in Pakistan despite pre-shipment inspection at the country of origin and supply to the flour mills in all the provinces at a uniform rate and without any subsidy element.
Mr. Asad Elahi, Secretary Statistics Division, also attended the meeting, says a press release.
Welcoming the delegation to the Ministry of Finance, Dr Salman Shah said that in order to bring down the price of atta and have a smooth supply to the markets in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the government was determined to take all the necessary steps to liberalize the import of wheat and atta by the private sector including flourmills.
He said the government believed that the market mechanism and the concept of uninterrupted supply from the cheapest sources could ensure sustained supply of atta at affordable prices to the people.
?We have introduced a liberal import regime and now wheat and atta can be imported by the private sectors including flour -mills from anywhere. The government will however maintain the strategic reserves of wheat,? he said.
The association expressed gratitude for the measures introduced by the government for liberal import of wheat and wheat flour by the private sector and assured that they would run their flourmills with full capacity to provide relief to the people and bring down the price of atta.
The association leaders said the atta price had started decreasing due to the news of the arrival of Russian wheat in Pakistan and the consistency in the policy of liberal import of wheat and flour would lead to full utilization of the capacity of the flour mils to reduce costs, bringing down the atta price in the coming days.
IFC trains women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan Uz Report.com (Uzbekistan) 30 July 2005
The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, recently organized a two-day workshop on ?How to Market your Business? for 40 women entrepreneurs in Kabul. The event, which was held 26-27 July, is part of a larger IFC regional program to strengthen women-owned small and medium enterprises.
The workshop was designed for women who have some experience in formal small and medium-sized businesses and who seek innovative, non-traditional and growth-oriented approaches to their enterprises. It was delivered using IFC?s Business Edge management training methodology and expertise. The training series aims to increase productivity, profitability, and growth in small businesses by improving their financial, operational, and marketing management. It also focuses on the soft skills needed for effective human resource management and sound leadership. In particular, the Kabul workshop focused on the introduction to marketing concepts, the targeting of markets, and pricing.
IFC workshops intend to provide women with the skills and the support they need to emerge and to compete in the mainstream business world. Despite the challenges arising from the post-conflict environment of Afghanistan, IFC believes that unleashing the potential of entrepreneurship is crucial to enabling women to transform their socioeconomic status, bolster private sector development, and ultimately contribute to the country?s reconstruction and economic advancement. ?Afghanistan needs all its citizens, male and female, to participate in the economic growth of the country. Workshops like these that equip women with business skills are contributed to this". These were Mr. Hamid Qaderi?s (CEO of Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC)) remarks at the end of the workshop when thanked for hosting it.
IFC?s technical assistance facility, the Private Enterprise Partnership for the Middle East and North Africa, has been drawing from its regional experience and country mapping surveys to identify market barriers facing women, including access to markets, finance, business resources, and associations. IFC research shows that market failures discriminate more against women than men and that some of these imbalances can be addressed by technical assistance interventions targeted at growth-oriented enterprises.
Food prices soar in Afghanistan BBC Monitoring Pajhwok news agency 29 July 2005
Prices of some daily commodities registered upward trend despite increase in the value afghani [Afghan currency] while gold prices considerably came down over the week in the local market.
Purchase rate of a US dollar that stood at 49.80 at the start, declined to 49.75 Afghanis at the weekend. Exchange rate of afghani ended up at 818 against 1,000 [Pakistani] rupees. Earlier it was 820 Afghanis per 1,000 rupees.
According to local jewelers, gold prices declined in the market over the week. A goldsmith, Bhai Wardak, in the Kabul Metropol Market, said price of one gram of Arabic gold had reduced from 650 to 640, while that of Iranian gold from 550 to 540 Afghanis.
However, local merchants say prices of daily commodities and food items, like rice, tea etc., have shoot up due to the higher rates of transportation and decrease in the value of Pakistani currency vis-?vis Afghanis.
A 50-kg bag of rice that valued 1,600 Afghanis at the start of the week now sold for 1,650 Afghanis. Price of green tea also shoots up by 10 Afghanis per kilogram over the week.
However, prices of other commodities, like flour, sugar and cooking oil, remained stable. Prices of a 50-kg flour and sugar bags remained at 1,480 and 1,250 respectively while five kilogram cooking oil was sold for 180 and one kilogram black tea for 140 Afghanis.
The prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and diesel also remained unchanged standing at 32 Afghanis per kg and 25 Afghanis per liter respectively.
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