According to a report by the organisation Data for Afghanistan, nearly half of the country\u2019s rural population, equal to 12.3 million people, live more than an hour by car from the nearest market, limiting farmers\u2019 and local producers\u2019 access to business opportunities. The situation has reduced rural economic capacity and weakened the development process in these areas.<\/p>\n
The report proposes 96 locations in 34 provinces for the creation or expansion of rural markets. Most of these areas are district centres and township markets that could provide better and faster services to nearby residents. With the implementation of these plans, around 6.6 million rural residents are expected to be able to reach markets in less than an hour.<\/p>\n
The programme would also allow more than 898,000 producer households to better market and sell their agricultural products and local goods. The annual transaction volume of the proposed markets is estimated at approximately $208 million, although this could vary between $104 million and $312 million depending on conditions.<\/p>\n
According to projections, the creation of these new markets could generate 6,546 direct jobs and 10,474 indirect jobs; however, these figures appear relatively limited and insufficient in Afghanistan\u2019s current economic situation.<\/p>\n
The main concern is that while millions of rural Afghans still lack access to basic infrastructure, attention to such limited economic projects cannot serve as a real substitute for a broad and inclusive development plan. The Taliban administration has also so far announced no specific or comprehensive plan to improve economic conditions and make market opportunities more accessible to people, an issue that requires urgent and serious attention.<\/p>\n
The report, titled ‘Afghanistan Rural Market Opportunity,’ uses open data, relevant institutions and various sources to assess the current state of markets and offers solutions to reduce the distance between rural residents and economic markets. Despite the importance of these initiatives, neglect or delays in implementing them could have further negative consequences for the rural economy and the country\u2019s sustainable development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A report says 12.3 million rural Afghans live over an hour from markets, limiting trade, jobs and economic development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24536","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=24536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}