At a high-level meeting of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Executive Committee last week, chaired by Afghanistan’s Chief Executive, H.E. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, UNDP’s new Resident Representative, Abdallah Al Dardari announced a week of roundtable meetings with economics and development experts later this month.

The roundtable discussions, held jointly by UNDP and the Afghan Government, will draw experts from all over the world, and from many different disciplines, to explore Afghanistan’s options for an economy that works for peace and is embedded in the framework of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

The discussions will involve international experts as well as Afghan nationals from government and other areas, as Mr Dardari has emphasized that any plan for an Afghan economy must be formed and led by Afghans themselves.

Along with the meetings, Mr Dardari presented the idea of an ‘SDGs platform’, a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to the Chief Executive.

The CGE modelling would be the stepping stone for integrated policy-making and planning to achieve the Afghanistan Sustainable Development Goals, because it would bring an integrated systems approach to planning, investment and implementation of development in Afghanistan.

“The CGE model comes with ninety-thousand equations and would be able to simulate the impact of a single policy, such as investment on public health, on the wider economy,” stated Mr Dardari during his presentation.

As the lead UN agency for development, UNDP is mandated to support and help the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and act as ‘integrator’ of the SDGs.
 

Contact Information:

• Abdulghani Amin, UNDP Programme Unit: abdulghani.amin@undp.org
• S. Omer Sadaat, UNDP Communications, sayed.omer@undp.org

MORE PHOTOS: