South Sudan’s economy has been in distress for over a decade now but the way ahead still murky.
The institutions overseeing the state of the economy have been trying to fix somethings, but their efforts appeared to be not succeeding in addressing the situation. This is being manifested in the continuous weaknesses of pounds. At current, the Pound trends around 6000 per dollar.
Economy is basically the resources and wealth of the country, which are turned into production and at the end consumption, in term of goods and services. And it’s the systematic or cautious management of the resources available in the country. As such, monetary value comes into play to measure the standards of the goods and services in order to acquire them, hence, the supply of money in the hands of people, and public treasury or accounts aligned with the economic policy and other laws.
It’s not a surprise for those who have been monitoring how the state of the economy has been handled with the ballooning strength of dollar against South Sudanese pounds. These are the results of breakdown of law and order (mismanagement of the resources with impunity), bankruptcies, and insecurity among other things.
We are cash strapped economy, as such the hard currency is scarce both in the markets, and in the reserves.
The central bank releases dollars to the markets in order to strengthen pounds, and traders to access them, but it lacks backups from other sectors of the economy like productions, trades, and infrastructures which in the end supply the money back to the bank.
The lack of strong economic system and sustainable peace are the one making lives of the citizens very hard every day. The government needs to factor these very well because what’s holding the country is the economy, if it is collapsing, then, it may reach a point where even government’s ability to function is threatened and there will be no service delivery to the citizens.
There should be much efforts by the government to uphold peace, security, and fight against corruption in public offices. Otherwise, it will not be an easy thing for the civil servants who earn low, especially in the government institutions, small retail business, to survive this very difficult time. Also, the poor citizens who have nothing completely.
Either half of the country will be dying secretly or with little information to the leaders.
This kind of crisis is too much and unbearable in a country like South Sudan with allots of resources and even today if anyone goes to the camps for support, it will be worse than ever.
I call upon the president of the republic of South Sudan with line institutions dealing with the country’s economy to address the Public on why the economy is like this? The government must save the lives of its citizens in times of difficulties, as this.
God protect South Sudan.
Be witness