South Sudan told achieving peace only way to fix embattled economy

JUBA – South Sudan government has been told by a local economist that successful implementation of the revitalized peace agreement signed in 2018 is the only way to fix the country’s embattled economy.

The oil-rich East African country is facing serious economic setbacks imposed by corruption, decline in oil prices and effects of the March outbreak of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, President Salva Kiir made changes at the country’s financial institutions, the ministry of finance, the state-owned Nile Petroleum Company, and the National Revenue Authority.

However, those changes have not changed the reality on the ground with traders at Juba market telling Sudans Post on Friday that the economy has continued to fall despite the changes made by the president.

In an interview with the VOA, Ahmed Morgan, a Juba-based economist and lecturer at the University of Juba, said the country’s economy cannot be fixed unless the unity government achieve peace.

“Economic problems in the country can only be fixed when you actually fix the pay for production in the economy, which we don’t have in the current state. And the basics for production of a good economy, we are supposed to have sustainable peace and general stability for security purposes so that we start local production for local consumption,” Morgan told the VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

“Civil servants have not been paid for months; then the government has to come up with plans on how it will never go back to the same position again. I have been complaining that we need to strengthen our policies of foreign exchange, by reducing imports of such things, not forgetting that South Sudan is an oil-producing country and still we are importing the final products of oil,” he added.

South Sudan government said this week that it has successfully won a $88 million loan from Afreximbank Bank to help it pay local debts which has made it incapable to control prices of foreign currencies in teh country.

Marial Awou, an economics professor and vice chancellor at Upper Nile University, welcomed the loan, noting the country’s reserves are nearly bankrupt.

“It is a relief to the government since the government is in the very serious situation of not being able to pay the salaries of civil servants and not able to operate normal functions of the government. There is almost a complete bankruptcy in the government,” he said.