At this stage the campaign appears to be running smoothly, with no major problems. There was a delay in starting vaccinations in two districts of Zabul province, due to logistical problems in getting vaccines to the district coordinators, but these were quickly resolved and immunization should start today in these two districts.

No reports have yet been received from Uruzgan, but campaign coordinators expect to receive updates from that province later this afternoon.

The campaign aims to reach more than 2 million children with the oral polio vaccine, as part of an ongoing effort to eradicate the disease from Afghanistan . Six cases of polio have been reported in 2006, all in the southern parts of the country.

While this is an increase over previous years, experts believe that this may be the result of improved monitoring and surveillance, with cases now being identified more effectively than before.

The Ministry of Public Health, UNICEF and WHO remain confident that the goal of polio eradication is achievable, but call upon communities and families to play their part by ensuring that all children under the age of five in the 11 provinces are presented to vaccination teams over the remaining two days of the campaign, to ensure that all eligible children are reached.

The 11 provinces being covered this week are Kandahar , Helmand , Nimroz, Zabul, Uruzgan, Ghazni, Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Nangarhar and Kunar.

Flooding Updates
Most of you will be aware that spring floods are currently affecting several areas of the country. UNAMA is coordinating efforts of UN agencies, the Government, and NGOs to make sure that emergency relief is reaching those people affected.

- Baghlan
In Doshi district of Baghlan, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), working with the Afghan Red Crescent Society and Department of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, has provided family kits for some 96 families. These contain essential cooking utensils, soap, plastic tarpaulin sheets and blankets. The World Food Programme (WFP) has also provided 7.3 tons of essential food.

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and UNICEF have dispatched Measles vaccines and equipment to protect children.

Six school tents have been set up by UNICEF to replace the six schools that were destroyed. School stationary kits have also been delivered.

The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) also with UNICEF's support is delivering jerry cans and chlorine to organize the treatment of wells which have been contaminated by the floods and to ensure that the affected communities have safe drinking water.

- Sari Paul
Finally, in Sari Paul WFP and UNICEF are helping 24 families whose homes were destroyed by floods last week.

ILO releases Child Labour Global Report
Last Thursday the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) released its Global Report on Child Labour.

The report, entitled “The End of Child Labour: Within Reach” shows a marked decline in child labour throughout the world and believes the worst forms of child labour can be eliminated in the next 10 years.

The report says that the number of child labourers worldwide fell by 11 percent between 2000 and 2004 to 218 million. Children between 5 and 17 years of age fall under the child labour category.

The report does not address the situation in Afghanistan as the ILO office has yet to carry out activities in this field. However the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is revising its Labour Code bringing its provisions in line with the ILO's labour standards including the Convention concerning Minimum Age (No. 138) as well as the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 183).

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has submitted a proposal to the Cabinet for the ratification of both these Conventions. Once ratified, the Afghan Government will announce the minimum age of employment as 14 years in Afghanistan . This is in line with the ILO Conventions.

UNODC, Afghan Government start project to control chemicals used to produce Heroin
To stem the flow of chemicals for producing Heroin, the Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, have joined forces to counter smuggling of these chemicals.

UNODC in partnership with the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNPA) will establish a Precursor Control Unit within the (CNPA). Training will be provided to the Counter Narcotics Police, the Afghanistan Border Police, and the Afghanistan Customs Control.

Trained interdiction officer will also receive equipment used to identify and detect illicit chemicals.

The project is being funded by the European Commission, at a cost of US $2.5 million.

These results confirm that Avian Influenza is present in Kabul , Logar, Nangarhar and Kapisa. Two other provinces, Laghman and Parwan, need further assessment and the FAO will be collecting more samples to clarify the situation there.

Meanwhile the FAO laboratory in Kabul continues to receive and test samples from different parts of the country. Some 220 samples are due to arrive at the reference laboratory in Italy for more stringent tests.

In terms of public awareness, a campaign is currently underway to warn the population of the dangers associated with bird flu. Leaflets have been distributed to the public at large, poultry farmers, as well as health workers. Radio messages have also been produced and are airing throughout the country.

Employing close to 200 Afghans, the project involves some of the most vulnerable people in the country, including widows, single families, returnees and the internally displaced. The project not only helps generate income but is also a way to help increase the literacy rate in the country.

In the Khogiani district of Nangarhar, WFP is providing 34 tons of food consisting of wheat, pulses, oil and iodized salt, while the refugee agency has made a US $22,388.00 contribution.

The program is currently looking for additional donor funds in order to expand.

UNEP hosting Environment Act workshop for NEPA officials

To encourage implementation of the Afghan Environment Law, which was passed on December 18, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will be hosting a two-day workshop beginning this Wednesday May 10 for all National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) officials in Kabul .

A UNEP developed implementation manual written in Dari and English will be presented and discussed.

Today's guest
Today the focus of our press briefing is Afghanistan 's Economy, which as you may know is projected to grow this year by close to 14 percent. The aim of this briefing is to help journalists understand what is happening in the economy, and what the issues are. On the side table is a fact sheet with key economic indicators.

To help us in this we are joined today by Stephane Guimbert, an economist from the World Bank, Alastair McKechnie, the World Bank's Country Director for the South Asia region, and Ijaz Nabi, Sector Manager for the South Asia region. All three are currently visiting Afghanistan .

Alastair McKechnie

On May 25 we will be having a discussion at our board in Washington on a new country strategy for Afghanistan and this will also be a discussion on the commentary by the staff of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the Afghanistan National Development Strategy which is the country's poverty reduction strategy paper.

I would also like to mention that during the last few weeks we've been processing a couple of new programmes that the World Bank is looking to finance. The first one is on agriculture, particularly horticulture and animal husbandry which will do a lot to improve the livelihood of rural Afghans. The second one concerns the extractive industries, mining and petroleum and helping Afghanistan manage these resources transparently for the good of the Afghan people.

As an overview, the economic performance of Afghanistan since 2001 has been quite remarkable. The economy has grown at average rates of more than 10 percent which would place it among the world's rapidly growing economies. This means that the national income has increased by 60 percent in the past 4 or so years. Per capita, it has increased about 50 percent. Of course economic growth by itself is not sufficient for development but this represents good progress. Of course I'm referring to the legal economy, not the drug economy which accounts for a third of the sum of legal plus illegal activities.

Although making comparisons over long periods of time about the Afghan economy is very difficult, because of the disruptions in statistics during the wars, we can probably say that incomes in Afghanistan are as high as they've ever been in the country's history. So considerable progress has been made.

However I don't want to appear naïve. There is an enormous agenda out there waiting to be done. For example, helping the private sector economy to grow further. Most private sector activity is small scale and informal, apart from a few exceptions such as telecommunications, hotels and so on.

Although a lot has been achieved to build government capacity to strengthen administration, I think most Afghans would agree there is a long way to go to improve the effectiveness of government to build the capacity for the state to deliver services to the people.

And we, like many Afghans, are concerned about corruption, about transparency, which is one part of the broader problem of helping Afghanistan to create a modern administration.

And the World Bank, as well as financing investments and providing money to support the government budget, we also provide advisory services, transfer global knowledge from around the world to Afghanistan . And these areas are public administration reform and anti-corruption. [These] are priorities for us in terms of knowledge services over the coming 18 months. And indeed the work we are doing in the petroleum and minerals sector is very much designed to help the government ensure transparency in the extraction of these mineral and petroleum resources. And also to ensure that Afghanistan obtains the maximum money from the resources.

I will now hand things over to Stephane Guimbert who is the country Economist for Afghanistan and is also one of the authors of a recent publication called “ Afghanistan : Managing Public Finances for Development,” which is available on our web page.

Stephane Guimbert

It is important to note that in addition to the economic growth that Alistair has described and the good performance that the economy has achieved, is that this is pretty much regular 10 percent [growth] a year, and Afghanistan has avoided the shocks that happened before crises going very quickly, other shocks. So that's also a very positive outcome in maintaining growth.

However, like the explanation that Alistair gave for the overall growth performance, there is little room to be satisfied. For example, two years ago, because of the severe drought in the south, the economic performance was actually lower because agriculture yields were not very good. So this is another example of the need to strengthen the base of economic growth through, for example, infrastructure, irrigation to face droughts. So the only point I wanted to add before answering your questions is to make sure that this is a sustained growth pattern with some regularity. The performance has been good but there still needs more work on the budget side, the administration side, and the infrastructure side.

Questions & Answers

Question: How much has the World Bank given to Afghanistan , and will give to Afghanistan ? And how much of this are loans?

Alastair McKechnie: My colleague from the World Bank in Kabul can give you precise figures on how much the World Bank has provided in grants and loans. Just to give you an indication, since 2002 the World Bank has provided about $950 million dollars and some of this has been in soft loans. For the past five years we've provided funds one hundred percent as grants and our policy has been to continue to provide around $270 million a year for the next three years and slightly less after that. For the moment all of this will be in grants, certainly for the next two to three years.

I'd like to explain what a soft loan is. It's for a duration of 40 years, and for the first ten years none of the loan amount has to be paid back. And there's no interest but there is a fee of 0.75 percent to cover administrative costs so it's very, very soft.

I would also mention that the World Bank is the administrator of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, and this has provided $1.3 billion to Afghanistan over the past four-and-a-half years, and this has been used to finance the salaries and wages of civilian employees of the Afghanistan Government plus some in business.

Question: Can you give more details on the May 25 th summit in Washington ?

Alastair McKechnie: There are two main items for discussion for a board of directors that represents the hundred and fifty or so countries that are members of the World Bank, including Afghanistan of course. The first thing is a routine discussion on the government's national development strategy, which was released at the conference in London in January this year. This has already been approved by the United Nations Security Council, so there is a formal discussion of this document at our board, and this is a good opportunity for Afghanistan to convey its development strategy to the international community. And this discussion might provide some advice to the government on how to move forward with the next phase of the development strategy. For example on how to choose priority investments in each sector, on how to monitor and evaluate development results.

The second topic which our directors will discuss is the World Bank's own strategy and joint program for assisting Afghanistan . And this has three pillars. The first one is helping Afghanistan building strong public administration. The second pillar is how to expand rural livelihoods, improve the level of economic activity in rural areas. And the third pillar is about increasing growth, particularly growth driven by the private sector. All these three pillars will contribute to reducing poverty in Afghanistan .

After our board has approved this strategy it will be made public, and we'd be available to come here and give you another briefing on the details of it.

Question: When we talk about economic growth we should be able to see it. But people are getting poorer and poorer, and cannot buy things. Why can't we see economic growth? And how do we measure economic growth?

Alastair McKechnie: Indeed, there are a number of ways in which we can measure growth. Some of them are actually not too difficult: For example, in agricultural production – it's easy to measure this. The capacity of the government to measure things is another thing we at the World Bank are working at. So your point is well taken that it's difficult to measure all these economic indicators – it takes time. For example, the most basic indicator you want to measure is the number of people in the country and it took some time to [be able to do] this.

On your first question, although you can dispute some of the numbers behind this economic growth, there is economic growth. And then there is the question – and I don't have good answers – how has this growth been distributed to the population. There are many different ways of looking at that. The situation in urban areas is different from rural areas. So the drivers of this growth come from agriculture but also come from telecommunications and restaurants. So depending on how different parts of the economy are doing, the impact is felt by different members of the population.

Ijaz Nabi: I work in several southeast Asian countries, primarily Pakistan . The quality of data collection is a very serious problem. Also the country is going through very rapid changes. Because of Afghanistan 's wars it's very difficult to measure this country in all spheres. So what happens is that statisticians use some variables that they can easily measure – for example total imports coming into the country, total steel that the country is using. And then see how this consumption would be linked to the purchasing power of other commodities, and then estimate the overall effect.

On the distribution question whether the majority or the minority is benefiting there you have to look at the sector. For example, if agriculture grows over a sustained period of time then we know that by and large the rural population will benefit, which has happened in the past. There has been a major restoration of the agricultural economy in Afghanistan . So there's strong reason to believe that this growth is not just in Kabul but also in rural areas. The final answer is to look at household incomes and expenditures – and the capacity to start measuring those are being built up.

Question: If you look at our imports and exports our imports are much greater. Why do some people have the power to buy steel and to buy cement to build apartments and plazas? These 3-4 years have been special years for us but we haven't seen an increase in our income. If we see a raise in our incomes we are hopeful. If we see just a raise in construction we are not hopeful. The situation is getting worse, not better. I have talked with shopkeepers – they're losing shoppers.

Ijaz Nabi: If anyone would say that Afghanistan 's problems have been solved they would be exaggerating in the extreme. There are many issues that are not addressed. What are the sources of growth? What is being done to help poor areas? These are good, valid questions. But we need to look at our progress in the past four years. As government reforms deepen, I'm confident that some of your concerns will be addressed.

IRIN: As you know the illicit drug trade makes over half of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan . Do you think that the current economic growth has an effect on this problem?

Stephane Guimbert: I guess there are two issues. One is related to our earlier discussion about the impact from illicit income on the rest of the economy. The other is that over time the growth of the licit economy will be sufficient to provide valuable alternatives to illicit productions. That process will take time. Taking agriculture as an example – the specific crops that will be able to compete with large profits in the opium economy – there are only a few opportunities. That is why one of our products is focusing on horticulture for instance which might be a promising way in the rural areas to develop alternatives that are profitable. So these are alternatives that would have an effect on the illicit drugs.

IWPR: (translated from Dari) You talked about the economic growth and you claim that we have 10 percent growth in the economy and the government also claims that there is growth in the economy, but as everyone sees rates of unemployment and poverty are high in this country and those returnees are now thinking of going back to their refuge places. What will the World Bank do about this?

Alastair McKechnie: I think although the economy has grown rapidly over the past four and a half years, this does not mean that Afghanistan is a rich country. It started from a very low base at a time when there was drought, when there was almost famine and it was something of a miracle, and I think thanks to the good work by the UN and NGOs there was not the kind of mass starvation here that one sees in Africa . So the base was very low and there's been a lot of progress since then but there is still an enormous distance to travel.

We hope that all of the things we do in Afghanistan contribute to reducing poverty. I would mention two specific things that we are doing over the next year that we hope will create jobs and livelihoods. The first is related to private sector development and industrial parks. We are proposing to finance two industrial parks, one in Kabul and one probably in Jalalabad and these will overcome some of the greatest constraints to private investments in Afghanistan .

A survey of businesses in Afghanistan carried out by the World Bank revealed that the three greatest constraints to investments were first a shortage of land, second infrastructure, particularly electricity, and third finance. And also security costs firms in Afghanistan 15 percent of the costs of their sales compared to two percent in Pakistan , and three percent in Tajikistan . So providing land which has infrastructure, where there is security, will help to remove some of the barriers to investment.

The other area which we are looking at is in the rural sector, particularly agriculture where we are looking to support two things. One is the expansion of horticulture which involves providing seedlings for farmers to plant and also to support the whole processing of fruit and nuts and marketing them and how to sell them abroad. That is a really important sector.

The other area is what's called animal husbandry - sheep, goats, cows, and other animals - particularly providing farmers with information on how to produce good animals and good products and also for medicines because the more meat animals grow depends on how healthy they are and how they deal with some of the diseases, the pests in their stomachs and so on, has a tremendous impact on how productive animal husbandry is.

Question: What are the World Bank's plans on salaries, especially that of teachers?

Alastair McKechnie: A very good question. Government salaries are indeed a problem and we have been working with the authorities to help them come up with a plan for dealing with this. We hear from Parliamentarians and other Afghans about the effectiveness of the public administration. So what the government plans is to look at restructuring ministries, defining their objectives, looking at the organization of them, what people they need and selecting good people into these jobs and paying them more.

Our view is that salary increases should be linked to the reform and the effectiveness of the administration. Otherwise enormous amounts of money will be needed to pay higher salaries and Afghans won't see the improvement and effectiveness in the quality of government unless there is reform at the same time. And quite frankly there just isn't the money to pay for large salary increases without improvement in the effectiveness of government. So we expect over the next year the government will start to introduce what they call a pay and grading reform. There will be reforms in the civil service and the people who are in these new jobs will be paid more. I think there's also an issue of what the ministers have called the second civil service. The people who are employed by donors, by the UN, by NGOs who are financed from the external budget and 70 percent of aid that doesn't go through the government budget and essentially provide government type services. And this is an issue we want to work with authorities so that some time in the future, and we're talking about years, people who are producing the same results should be paid roughly the same. But I would stress that the financial constraint that the government operates on is very severe. There is just not the money for large salary increases for all civil servants at one time – it is simply impossible.