WASHINGTON, Aug 18 — The Taliban took over Afghanistan with astonishing speed, but it appears unlikely that the militants will get quick access to most of the Afghan central bank’s roughly US$10 billion (RM42 billion) in assets. The country’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), is...
WASHINGTON, Aug 18 — The Taliban took over Afghanistan with astonishing speed, but it appears unlikely that the militants will get quick access to most of the Afghan central bank’s roughly US$10 billion in assets.
“Given that the Taliban are still on international sanction lists, it is expected that such assets will be frozen and not accessible to Taliban,” Ahmady said in a“We can say the accessible funds to the Taliban are perhaps 0.1-0.2 per cent of Afghanistan’s total international reserves. Not much,” he added.
Investments were made through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development , an arm of the World Bank, or through the FRBNY and held in New York. Among its smaller items are shares in an investment pool by the Bank for International Settlement , which is based in Switzerland, as well as the Economic Cooperation Organisation Trade and Development Bank in Turkey.
An official in US President Joe Biden’s administration told Reuters: “Any central bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban.” The Afghan central bank’s vaults also contain a hoard of 2,000-year-old gold jewellery, ornaments and coins known as the Bactrian Treasure, according to Unesco. The around 21,000 ancient artefacts were presumed lost until 2003, when they were found in a secret vault in the central bank’s basement, having survived the previous era of Taliban rule undiscovered.
This distribution of SDRs, the Fund’s unit of exchange based on dollars, euros, yen, sterling and yuan, aims to shore up the reserves of developing countries strained by the Covid-19 pandemic. IMF member Afghanistan is eligible for an allocation of about US$455 million, based on its 0.07 per cent quota shareholding in the Fund.
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