The resources applied by the Afghan government (the Taliban de facto authorities) to gather and compile Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data are severely inadequate.

In fact, formal statistical production of national accounts has largely ground to a halt or operates at a baseline minimal level. The agency responsible, the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA), operates under acute institutional and financial constraints:

• Lack of Official GDP Reporting: Organizations like the World Bank have noted that the de facto authorities are not consistently producing or releasing comprehensive, standardized national accounts.
• Institutional & Technical Brain Drain: Following the withdrawal of international forces and foreign aid in 2021, the NSIA lost significant institutional capacity, foreign funding, technical assistance, and trained statisticians.
• Budgetary Constraints: With foreign grants-which previously funded up to 75% of public expenditures-largely frozen or diverted to off-budget humanitarian relief, the current government operates on a tight domestic revenue budget. Stat-gathering is not prioritized over basic administration and security spending.
• Massive Informal Economy: A significant portion of Afghanistan's economic activity takes place in the informal sector, unregistered agriculture, cross-border smuggling, or illicit trade (such as opiates/mining). Measuring these components accurately requires extensive field surveys and resources that the government lacks.

Because government-produced macroeconomic data is missing or incomplete, international bodies (e.g., the World Bank, UNDP, and IMF) rely on alternative methods-rapid sample surveys, satellite nightlight data, and customs and trade indicators from neighbouring countries-to estimate the country's economic health.