By Akol Madut Ngong
The National Minister of Finance & Planning Agak Achuil Lual said attaining the growth objective in the FY 2022/2023 demands that the private sectors must play a stronger role in economic development also imperative that South Sudanese participate fully in the various economic activities.
Minister Agak made the assertion during his presentation of the draft National Budget for the Fiscal Year 2022/2023 to the Reconstituted Transitional National Legislature on Wednesday, 3rd August 2022, in its first reading stage for further scrutiny and deliberation by the parliament.
He emphasized that they should continue to focus on implementing structural reforms and provide infrastructures in order to reduce the cost of doing business.
“Our Fiscal policy will focus on maintaining macroeconomic and public debt stability as well as re-enforcing transparency and discipline in the budget execution while oil revenue has enabled us to eliminate domestic salary arrears as of end-June-2022,” Agak said.
He stressed that high oil prices and continued improvement in non-oil revenue will increase the resources envelope in FY 2022/2023, and there are pressing needs for high spending such as unification of forces that was agreed in April 2022 implying an increase in the number of military personnel for about two-third.
In addition, the Minister said to mitigate the impact of sharply higher food and fuel prices, the FY2022/2023 draft budget included an upwards adjustment of 20% in the pay scale for all public sector employees.
“We are looking to raise spending on health and education to the extent possible although the payments to Sudan under the Transitional Finance Arrangement (TFA) of 2012 were completed in March 2022, no arrangement has yet been reached with Sudan on the in-kind over-payments of crude oil previously supplied to Sudan that took 28, 000 barrels/day,” Achuil underlined.
He said the draft budget for FY2022/2023 targets an overall deficit of SSP 560 billion about 20% of GDP; this came about due to the debt service obligation and loan repayments of SSP 183 billion about 7% of GDP.
“I would like to inform the August Houses that while we await the adoption of the FY2022/2023 budget, the Ministry of Finance has uploaded the spending envisaged under the draft budget in the intergraded Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) to facilitate expenditure control,” Agak Achuil underlined.