The missing piece in our Economy, as inflation bites citizens
By Kiden Stela Mandela
The economy is what lives of people rely on, without functioning economy people live in a degrading situation. Economy is confined in production, distribution and trade, including consumption of goods and services. According to economic literature, economy is also a collection or combination of factors like education, technology, history, political structure, natural resources, social organizations, legal system, values etc. These are categorized set of processes that complement one another. So it’s the responsibility of economic agents like governments, organizations, businesses and individuals to drive these processes to benefit all in the economy.
So given the above context, the government is the central authority to lay concrete ground for the economy to pick up well. The economy of South Sudan, since before and after the independence never developed because there’s key piece in the economy that was not prioritized by the decision-makers. And for that matter today inflation is shaping the lives our citizens.
The missing piece is the “integrated economic growth policies” that oversee the capacity of the economy to produce. In the product line there’s capital, labor, utilization of natural resources, and technology. These would have created the value chains that led to the economic growth. The economic growth policies would have streamlined investment in infrastructure (quality roads, bridges, airports, electricity) and their maintenance, labor force, capital accumulation and savings, taxation system, etc.
Besides, it is good politics that encourage sustainable peace, and avoiding risking the sovereignty of the country, could have led us to economic growth, and real Gross Domestic Product (total value of goods and services produced in a country over a year).
The economy is managed by multi public institutions, and private sectors; not individual or one institution. Some people think the Central Bank’s auctioning of more dollars to the market will tame the inflation. The Central Bank is one institution which is playing its role but lacks complimenting support from other institutions, and other sectors. There are no productions, for export and domestic consumptions, no good infrastructure, no direct foreign investments that pump billions into the economy. All these would have generated revenues direct to the country’s reserve in order to make our currency strong in value.
The prices are higher because there’s no sustained economic growth, and the indigenous people have not taken control of their economy. Others argue that it is war that caused the economic hardships but even before the war, our economy was in bad shape. The war only added hurdles to the economy, and drained a lot of dollars out of the public treasury to buy weapons, and spending on other dealings.