The government of South Sudan, whose economy has been ravaged by years of war, has adopted an ambitious budget for the 2016 to 2017 fiscal year of about US$1 billion, three times as big as the previous year’s.
“The purpose of this budget is to implement the peace agreement,” South Sudanese Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters on Friday, referring to a deal signed in August last year.
The budget proposal has yet to be approved by parliament, but it is likely to be accepted, as most of the nation’s lawmakers are loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s government.
Adopted on Thursday by the government, the 30 billion South Sudanese pound (US$494 million) draft was delayed earlier this summer by a spike in violence, the latest upsurge in two-and-a-half years of war.
However, it is not yet clear where South Sudan will find the funds it would need to finance the budget, as fighting continues in parts of the country, leaving key trading routes to the capital blocked.
Asked about the possible sources of funding, Lueth told reporters: “We know where we will get the money. You need not to know where we can get the money.”
Lueth added: “The budget is higher than that of last year simply because last year there was no agreement on implementation” of a peace deal.
South Sudan’s economy, ravaged by a civil war that erupted in 2013, was further damaged by a wave of clashes in July that pitted President Kiir’s troops against former South Sudanese vice president Riek Machar’s forces in the capital Juba.
On the street, the South Sudanese pound’s value has plummeted dramatically, with the exchange rate at 70 South Sudanese pounds to the US dollar — nearly two and a half times the official rate.
Oil production too, which at the time of independence five years ago contributed 98 percent of the national budget, has sunk to just under 150,000 barrels per day.
Inflation is soaring at 600 percent per year, leading to a massive hike in the prices of basic goods.
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