Taliban to auction USD 14 million of Afghanistan's Central Bank
Mar 06, 2022
Kabul [Afghanistan], March 6 : Afghanistan's Central Bank-Da Afghanistan Bank- announced that it will auction up to USD 14 million on Sunday to devalue US dollars against Afghani, local media reported today.
According to Khaama Press, the bank has urged all monetary firms and services to take part in the auction.
Earlier on Wednesday, the bank auctioned the same amount of dollars to the monetary market of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan faces a worsening humanitarian and economic crisis since the Taliban took control of Kabul in August last year.
In February this year, US President Joe Biden had signed an Executive Order as part of an effort to set aside USD 3.5 billion in Afghan central bank assets for the benefit of the Afghan people.
In January this year, the United Nations' Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called on the international community to quickly provide assistance to the central bank of Afghanistan and do more to inject liquidity in the country's economy to avoid a collapse in 2022.
Nearly 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the Afghan population, are estimated to be in crisis or experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity in the month of March in 2022.
In its latest situation report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) expresses concern about "conditional humanitarianism" or attempts to "leverage" humanitarian assistance for political purposes.
A combination of a suspension of foreign aid, the freezing of Afghan government assets, and international sanctions on the Taliban, have plunged the country, already suffering from high poverty levels, into a full-blown economic crisis.
