{"id":94841,"date":"2020-07-28T08:10:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T08:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/lib\/improved-regional-connectivity-can-take-afghanistan-out-of-crisis\/"},"modified":"2020-07-28T08:10:16","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T08:10:16","slug":"improved-regional-connectivity-can-take-afghanistan-out-of-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/improved-regional-connectivity-can-take-afghanistan-out-of-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Improved regional connectivity can take Afghanistan out of crisis\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/swn.af\/pictures\/fileman\/2017_Uploads\/2020\/JULY\/28\/UNDP%20Afghanistan.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>KABUL (SW) &ndash; Improved regional connectivity for trade can serve as the key pull factor to take Afghanistan out of the crisis, a top UN official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The UNDP resident representative in Afghanistan, Abdullah Al-Darbari said this addressing a virtual press conference in connection with the launch of &lsquo;Afghanistan: Coronavirus Socio-Economic Impact Assessment&rsquo; report here. Responding to a question, improved trade ties is a &lsquo;win-win&rsquo; situation for Afghanistan and all of its neighbors. He pledged to continue convincing regional countries on it.<\/p>\n<p>The study suggests that the decline in GDP from global and regional economic effects on Afghanistan may reach 6.25% in 2020 compared to a level of economic activity without the pandemic that was previously predicted to increase by around 3%. The Poverty rate is estimated to increase by around 13 percentage points respectively from 55 percent and 68 percent.<\/p>\n<p>An income support program for 6 months (equal to half of the poverty line) targeting only working age adults or every citizen (e.g. Universal Basic Income) would require respectively 6% to 13% GDP, which is believed to be beyond the reach of government spending capacity.<\/p>\n<p>The paper assesses several scenarios on the COVID-19 impact and potential pathways towards recovery.<\/p>\n<p>Current trends in infection rate refers to &ldquo;Medium Infection Transmission rate&rdquo; as defined by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), where the costs for addressing the pandemic for additional beds, equipment and personnel may reach almost $250 million according to early estimates (April 2020) though this amount may no longer be adequate given the spread of the virus since then.<\/p>\n<p>ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KABUL (SW) \u2013 Improved regional connectivity for trade can serve as the key pull factor to take Afghanistan out of the crisis, a top UN official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-94841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}