After the takeover of the Taliban, the country is now further away than ever from a regulated, stable financial market. Because the hawala system is self-contained and works without external subsidies. But it cannot do without money that is shifted around in the system. Ideally, these are dollars, because the Afghani currency fluctuates a lot in the face of the chaos in the country. On the day of the takeover of power, one dollar cost 100 afghanis – previously it was around 80 afghanis, despite the devaluation that had already taken place.
The hawaladars cannot solve the fundamental problem that Afghanistan, which is now financially cut off from the outside world, is dependent on dollar payments from abroad. World Bank data shows: 42.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) came in 2020 as aid payments from abroad. A GDP of $ 19.8 billion with an estimated population of nearly 39 million people equates to a per capita income of just $ 508. This makes the Afghan population the seventh poorest in the world. 44 percent of the working population are employed in underdeveloped agriculture and generate a further 27 percent of GDP, six out of ten households derive at least part of their income from arable farming. Only about a fifth of the income in Afghanistan comes from industry, more than half of the GDP is earned in the service sector – in other words, above all by administrative employees financed through aid payments.
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