Despite a decline in the dollar’s exchange rate in Afghanistan’s markets, food prices have not yet come down, and residents of Kabul and Herat say pressure on household finances continues.<\/p>\n
In recent days, one US dollar has been trading at about 64.3 Afghanis. This comes as in early September, the dollar rate fluctuated between 65 and 66 Afghanis.<\/p>\n
The drop in the dollar’s value against the afghani has raised hopes among some people that imported goods may become cheaper, but a review of the market shows that this change has not yet been reflected in the prices of essential items. According to citizens, the prices of rice, oil, flour and sugar have not changed significantly.<\/p>\n
Sellers say previous purchases and import contracts were made at higher exchange rates, and for that reason an immediate price reduction is not possible. Based on their comments, the time gap between a fall in the exchange rate and its impact on the market has prevented an immediate drop in prices.<\/p>\n
Economic experts stress that because Afghanistan is heavily dependent on food imports, exchange-rate fluctuations have a direct effect on prices, but the transmission of this impact usually takes several weeks. They warn that if the dollar’s downward trend does not continue, the burden of living costs on families will remain.<\/p>\n
Some citizens and experts say stronger government oversight of markets and transparency in the import process are ways to narrow the gap between exchange rates and goods prices. Afghanistan imports a large share of the food it needs from abroad, and for this reason changes in the foreign exchange market usually affect the prices of basic goods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Food prices in Afghanistan have not fallen despite a weaker dollar, as residents say living costs remain under pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}