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Afghanistan

Volume 456: debated on Wednesday 31 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what the gross domestic product of Afghanistan was in each year between 1995 and 2006. (112307)

Records of gross domestic product in Afghanistan are patchy prior to 2001. In 1975 GDP was estimated at $2.4 billion. In 2002, the International Monetary Fund reported GDP at $4.1 billion, which has been steadily increasing on an annual basis to $4.6 billion in 2003, $6.0 billion in 2004, $7.3 billion in 2005 and $8.9 billion in 2006.

These statistics are available on the IMF's website www.imf.org.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what unemployment was in Afghanistan in each year between 1995 and 2006. (112308)

Given Afghanistan's predominantly informal economy and absence of a welfare system, added to the lack of a robust data collection capability, there is no reliable data for unemployment in Afghanistan going back to 1995.

Although data collection by the Central Statistical Office is improving, it is not yet possible to provide reliable estimates of unemployment. DFID and other donors are working with the Government of Afghanistan to improve access to key data such as rates of unemployment.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many (a) primary schools, (b) secondary schools and (c) higher education institutions there were in Afghanistan in each year between 1995 and 2006. (112314)

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education is unable to provide us with the data on the number of primary and secondary schools and higher education institutions in Afghanistan in each year between 1995 and 2006.

Enrolment rates may, however, provide a better measure of progress in education to date. According to UNICEF, enrolment has increased sharply since 2001 from 1.2 million in March 2002 to 5.1 million in December 2005. Prior to that, a World Bank report1 shows that approximately only 970,000 children (grades 1-12) were enrolled at school per year from 1993 and 1999.

1 Afghanistan: Managing Public Finances for Development—Volume IV (December 2005)