阿富汗新措施阻大规模资金外流

This is commerce in Kabul, Afghanistan, where money sits in piles on the streets to be bought and sold in the open air, but all the money changing before your eyes here is in a drop in the pocket compared to all the cash being siphoned out of the country in suitcases.

It’s hard to exactly estimate how much money is going out of Afghanistan, but I can tell you that in 2011, 4.5 billion more was out of Afghanistan.

And that’s just the money being logged out of Kabul airport, it’s estimated 8 billion dollars in cash is brought out of this country every year. That is almost double the entire country’s budget for last year. The government is making a move to try and stop the outflow of money to other countries, and encourage investment here. So it’s capped the amount of cash that can be taken out of Afghanistan to $20,000.

We’re very serious on this, and it’s not an easy job, definitely there is(are)challenges, and people will try, you know, but to use other channel(s), but we will not let anybody to take out the physical cash from Afghanistan.

Developer Haji Hafizullah Caravan hopes the plan works, he and his family have made a huge investment in Kabul, constructing large, self-contained communities, complete with mosques, schools, and markets. Each apartment sells for $70,000 and up and the projects have created dozens of jobs for people like Abdul Wahab who has 13 family members to provide for.

It’s hard to find work and to find good work, Caravan wants others to help build up the country instead of storing their cash in already posh Dubai. But he also understands why people have moved out large sums of cash, there’s a looming fear that when NATO forces leave, so will any semblance of security, both physical and economic.

We are only worried about security, that it doesn’t get any worse, we want stable system here in Afghanistan after foreign troops withdraw, we worry about this and nothing else, he says.

The 10-year war has brought heartache, but also more stability. Foreign aid is propping up Afghanistan’s economy. Question on every potential investor’s mind is: Will Afghanistan be able to sustain itself when the war is finally over?

Sara Sidner, cnn, Kabul, Afghanistan.