The closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year hit Somalia’s economy and tax revenues, the head of the country’s development bank said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“In Somalia (it) really impacted our GDP,” Hodan Osman, president of the Somali Development and Reconstruction Bank told the Financial Times Africa Summit in London on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
She said aid cuts reverberated in the economy in ways authorities didn’t expect, hurting economic activity and impacting sales tax revenues for the government.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump has slashed the country’s foreign aid budget, and shuttered USAID earlier this year. The agency had supported health, education and development worldwide.<\/p>\n
But Osman said the country faced a broader economic hit. “It also had (a) severe impact just on the economy alone that we weren’t really thinking about,” she said.<\/p>\n
Reporting by Libby George, editing by Karin Strohecker and Ros Russell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year hit Somalia’s economy and tax revenues, the head of the country’s development bank said on Tuesday. “In Somalia… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-somalia"],"yoast_head":"\n