An Afghanistan rebuilt starts with a rebuilt private sector
How do you start a business in a country of suicide bombings, blackouts, bribes, drug trading and rampant illiteracy?
Everyone agrees that if Afghanistan is ever to get back on its feet, it must create a working economy with a vibrant private sector. More than five years after the fall of the Taliban, it hasn’t even come close.
With a per capita GDP of just $315 (U.S.) a year, Afghanistan has few roads, few trained workers and only a handful of barely functional banks. The biggest legal exporter is a carpet maker that earns just $40-million a year.
The only really thriving business is opium, which accounts for one-third of economic activity. Much of the rest comes from international aid, and aid alone won’t do the trick. No country has ever graduated from poverty on handouts.
To get out of the hole they are in, Afghans have to start growing things, making things, selling things, buying things.
But how? That was the question at a conference held over the past two days in a Kabul hotel. The conference was organized by the Aga Khan Development Network along with the World Bank and other supporters, including The Globe and Mail, a charitable backer of the Aga Khan’s development work. It brought together bankers, businessmen, academics and government ministers to discuss how to create an “enabling environment” for the private sector.
Ismailimail 