Economy — Afghanistan

Despite improvements in life expectancy, incomes, and literacy since 2001, Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid.

Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs.

Corruption, insecurity, weak governance, lack of infrastructure, and the Afghan Government's difficulty in extending rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth.

Afghanistan's living standards are among the lowest in the world.

Since 2014, the economy has slowed, in large part because of the withdrawal of nearly 100,000 foreign troops that had artificially inflated the country’s economic growth.

The international community remains committed to Afghanistan's development, pledging over $83 billion at ten donor conferences between 2003 and 2016.

In October 2016, the donors at the Brussels conference pledged an additional $3.8 billion in development aid annually from 2017 to 2020.

Even with this help, the Government of Afghanistan still faces a number of challenges, including low revenue collection, anemic job creation, high levels of corruption, weak government capacity, and poor public infrastructure.

In 2017 Afghanistan's growth rate was only marginally above that of the 2014-2016 average.

The drawdown of international security forces that started in 2012 has negatively affected economic growth, as a substantial portion of commerce, especially in the services sector, has catered to the ongoing international troop presence in the country.

Afghan President Ashraf GHANI Ahmadzai is dedicated to instituting economic reforms to include improving revenue collection and fighting corruption.

The government has implemented reforms to the budget process and in some other areas.

However, many other reforms will take time to implement and Afghanistan will remain dependent on international donor support over the next several years.

• small-scale production of bricks, textiles, soap, furniture, shoes, fertilizer, apparel, food products, non-alcoholic beverages, mineral water, cement
• handwoven carpets
• natural gas, coal, copper

• Household Consumption: 81.6%
• Government Consumption: 12%
• Investment in Fixed Capital: 17.2%
• Investment in Inventories: 30%
• Exports of Goods and Services: 6.7%
• Imports of Goods and Services: -47.6%

• small-scale production of bricks, textiles, soap, furniture, shoes, fertilizer, apparel, food products, non-alcoholic beverages, mineral water, cement
• handwoven carpets
• natural gas, coal, copper

note: data on child labor in Afghanistan is uncertain and may be higher than the estimated 25% of children ages 5-14 derived from 2011 survey results; UNICEF estimated that 30% of children ages 5-14 in 2011 were engaged in child labor