By Bida Elly David
An economic analyst has warned South Sudan against blames on government, Ukraine –Russia war as major factors that contributed to the downfall of the Country’s economy noting that Central bank has to be questioned against the availability of money in the black market.
Speaking to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper yesterday, Abraham Matoch, a senior economic analyst said that South Sudan economy is failing because the market is under the hands of speculators who currently take control of the market.
“United States dollar is not supposed to dominate the local currency but speculators without proper fiscal and monetary policies are leading the market. People are blaming the whole thing on Ukraine-Russia war. South Sudan economy has got nothing to do with Ukraine-Russia war.
Abraham said that Ukraine-Russia have never one day exported goods to South Sudan neither are there commodities in the market labelled in the name of these two Countries, adding that South Sudan should blame themselves against laziness.
He echoed that market operation on free economy without intervention of the authority has broken down the hope of South Sudan economy from booming suggesting that there is need for a Centralized economy that is market friendly.
“Ukraine and other things are the problems of the Western world and other advanced Countries because they are the great baskets of the United States, Germany and others but we have no link about the war with Ukraine and the western world. We should stop blames on others,” he said.
Abraham said that speculations, black-marketing and lack of control of commodity prices by concerned institutions are also additional factors that have passively resulted into the breakdown of the economy predicting that worse will be experienced if no quick measures are taken.
“Our market is totally imperfect since productivity is not there and we are only importing. With this imperfect market, there are always speculators and these speculators could confuse and discourage market because they want to store their money in dollar form resulting to market monopoly,” he said.
In continuation, Abraham slammed monetary institutions against silence over availability of black-market bodies on highways handling bundles of South Sudanese pounds in a bid to exchange with dollars.
“An uncontrolled exchange rate business, lack of control of prices in the Country where people expose money on the streets is one key problem that affects the economy. Too much money in speculation affects the market inform of skyrocketing inflation,” he said.
He lamented that tribal conflict and issues to do with land grabbing have got nothing to do with the economy of the Country unless otherwise other factors remain constant.
“We need an economy that allows the government to intervene to stabilize or to control prices and make fixed exchange rate so that it doesn’t affect the common man in the economy,” he said.
However, efforts to reach the Central bank for comment has never been successful after several call trials.