Afghanistan had about $10 billion worth of foreign reserves on the eve of the Taliban take over, most of it held abroad. The US Treasury has now frozen these assets so the Afghan Central Bank has only about ten million dollars, according to the bank’s former governor Ajmal Ahmady, who recently fled abroad. This has reduced Afghanistan’s ability to finance several months’ imports to enough to pay for only about a week’s imports, the former apex bank governor said in a CNN interview.
Ahmady also doubted a story that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad with heavy bags full of dollars. He said no such funds came from the Central Bank, “unless the president had other sources of funds.”
