In a recent blow to the new Afghan regime, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has blocked the troubled nation from using almost half a billion dollars of reserves.
Afghanistan was set to receive $455 million of special drawing rights or SDRs from the global lender, however, the recent cut-off has followed a takeover by the Taliban.
As per some reports, the Biden administration had been taking steps to prevent the Taliban from being able to use the IMF-allocated reserves. The U.S. has also frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank and stopped shipments of cash to the nation.
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An official from the Biden administration also said that any central bank assets that the Afghanistan government has in the U.S. will not be available to the Taliban.
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The IMF had recently approved a plan to inject $650 billion of liquidity into the upset global economy to help them fund the pandemic healthcare spending.
This is a big hit to an already reeling economy whose almost three-quarters of nearly 40 million citizens live in rural areas.
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