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THE ANALYSIS OF MARBLE INDUSTRY IN AFGHANISTAN, CASE STUDY OF NANGARHAR PROVINCE

The marble industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of Afghan’s economy (Kuo., 2012; Rassin, 2012). Currently 40 marbles are being quarried, and over a hundred more have been identified and catalogued, and therefore supply is not a major constraint on growth. Current growth is two-pronged; the industry is gaining increased share of the domestic market for low-cost marbles, while expanding exports of high-value marbles that are in demand worldwide. Afghanistan is home to 60 known deposits, and it is projected that there are as many as 400 varieties of marble. With numerous high-quality deposits, the Afghanistan dimension stone industry has great potential to become a significant player in the Afghan economy and provide thousands of rural jobs at the quarries and in the downstream processing industry. Among the province of Afghanistan, Nangarhar province has rich natural resources including marble, wood, and gemstone deposits which are using locally and exports to other countries. Furthermore, Nangarhar is well known as the center base of uncut marble in the country and has excellent geological possibility and growth for a greater production of marble stones. By considering the importance of the sector, this study intended to analyze the sector status by collecting primary data from 13 big marble producers. The result of the study showed most of the producers are engaged as a family business and there is no huge investment as partnership or big industrial company in the sector. Furthermore, the employment level along with the sales are very low in the industry, the reason behind it, are foreign marble products which are competing with local producers and not letting the local producer to grow, sale, and hire more. The main biggest problems which is mentioned by the producers were lack of infrastructure, lack of electricity, limitation of raw materials’ extractions, damping policies of other countries, and higher taxes.