May 11th, 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – The government of South Sudan has approved 79 million South Sudanese pounds as the fiscal budget for the fiscal year, 2018/2019.
The deputy information minister Lily Akol Akol told reporters in the capital Juba that the government has approved 79 million pounds for the fiscal year 2018/2019.
South Sudan’s civil servants, the army, police and other organized forces as well as diplomatic missions has gone unpaid for several months leading to government closure of some diplomatic missions abroad.
The most recent incident was the shutdown of the South Sudan embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo which took place on the first of May, 2018.
South Sudan has been in a deep economic crisis instigated by the current civil war and with a budget of 79 million pounds the young nation may adopt tough austerity measures and close down most of its remaining embassies around the world.
The world’s youngest nation descended into a civil war in December 2013 after forces loyal to the country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardiit and his then Governor of Northern Bahr Al-Ghazal State Gen. Paul Malong Awan went door-to-door in the capital Juba killing civilians belonging to the Nuer ethnic group sparking a nation-wide protests from top army generals from the Nuer leading to a civil war.
A peace agreement signed in August 2015 by President Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar and negotiated under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) in presence of Troika and other international observers collapsed in July 2016 following fighting at the presidential palace in Juba “J1”.
The IGAD has employed an initiative called High-Level Revitalization Forum to bring back the peace agreement. Previous rounds of the HLRF has been unsuccessful and the IGAD said it expect the warring parties to negotiate on the last round on 17th of May. This week, the IGAD invited all the stakeholders to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for consultations for consultations.
