There has been no progress in in terms of Afghanistan’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the past six years, according to the Afghan Ministry of Economy.

On Tuesday, UNDP Afghanistan, in partnership with the Afghan Ministries of Finance and Economy, launched a three-day workshop on cost estimation of sustainable development goals (SDGs), which was aimed at validating an integrated approach and methodology.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Economy Nabi Soroush said that so far no program has been outlined to achieve SDGs targets.

“This SDGs Cost Assessment exercise will help the government of Afghanistan understand the priorities and make informed policy choices to achieve the Afghanistan SDGs,” said Soroush.

Based on its SDGs commitments, the Afghan government in  2015 had promised to overcome the poverty by 2030.

According to the UN statistics, poverty in Afghanistan hit a record high last year and it increased from 55 percent to 72 percent.

“As the lead development agency mandated to integrate the SDGs, UNDP is supporting the government of Afghanistan wth knowledge products that will enable them to make informed decisions and choose best policy options to help Afghanistan achieve the SDGs,” said Abdallah Al Dardari, UNDP Resident Representative for Afghanistan.

“The iSDG model will be developed in close coordination with the relevant government institutions, it will be a nationally owned model and will be handed over to the government,” added Abdallah Al Dardari, UNDP Resident Representative for Afghanistan.

Dardari has promised that the UNDP is supporting the Ministry of Economy to build a monitoring dashboard linking the National Priority Programs and SDGs with the budget which will enable the government to monitor and evaluate the real impact of development spending.

SDGs Cost Estimation Workshop will help policy makers prioritize SDGs and allocate resources accordingly.

“We want to have a real cost estimation of the SDGs,” said Andalib Mushtari, the head of the economic policies of Ministry of Finance.

“How to develop indicators, to achieve the goals, the nationalization of the goals and the cost estimations should have been done in the past five years, in the second stage, we need to focus on the implementation of the goals,” said Haseebullah Muwahid, the head of the Central Statistics Organization (CSO).

According to UNDP Afghanistan, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on SDGs in Afghanistan, increasing the cost of the SDGs by $300 million.