By Elbow Chuol,
Dec 21, 2015 (Nyamilepedia) —- The latest move by the country’s financial docket, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning headed by Mr. Deng Athorbei creats a big black economic hole on South Sudan, the youngest nation on earth.
Speaking to Chuar Juet Jock, a South Sudanese political science PhD student and economic expert in the city of Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Mr. Juet regretted and pity the poor south Sudanese by imposed economic behavior he wittily described as “the beginning of capitalism thievery” by the few in Juba, putting all the country’s money into foreign banks to have a full control of the financial situation in the country. In what he called an economical nutshell, Chuar still believes that the poor economic situation in South Sudan is reversible even if the greedy have their fingerprints all over our economic portfolio.
In an interview with Nyamilepedia Correspondent this morning, Mr. Juet made himself very clear in the below statement:
“We are not against capitalism but this is not the way capitalism is created, at least not in Africa. The South Sudan’s new social rich clique, the Kiir & Co., has finally decided to mitigate the accumulated stolen wealth for the last ten years and use them to steal even more from the same people they were stolen from at first place and hence bringing together its two faces, the one who is being managed by bad boys or the black market and other one being managed by their smooth criminals or the Central Bank.” Mr. Juet said.
This means that the 300 people, believed to be controlling South Sudan financial economic power base thuggishly, trimmed the economy by taking away the smallest portion left in the hands of the poor South Sudanese; it’s hair-raising situation.
“They decided finally to take away the little resources left in the hands of the struggling South Sudanese masses by floating the South Sudanese Pound against the US Dollar and as a result of this greedy step; unimaginable hike and increase in the prices of commodities, the transportation and the fuel as we have seen it at the quick rise in NilePet fuels prices and nearly in every commodity. I need not to remind you who own and controls those businesses nor the companies and hence I don’t have to remind you who controls the shaky economy,” Chuar sounds the alarm bell.
The gaps between rich and poor in a newly established nation widened since 2005 and it’s increasingly widening in alarming rate.
South Sudan being the third country in Africa with vast black-oil deposits, economic think-tanks argue that South Sudan would be the bread basket of the continent, if it had trustworthy guardians.
Sad enough, South Sudan remains as one of the poorest developing nations in the world. The current civil war further deforms a young nation that witnessed the longest civil war in Africa.
On floating the pound against the dollar, that was surprisingly announced by central Bank of South Sudan and later reaffirmed by South Sudan Minister of Economic Planning, Chuar regarded the new economic plan as a premature decision that adds no value to already dead economic status of the country.
According to the economists, the new rich social clique would have the chance of getting richer with the new policy as the poor grow poorer.
“Our new rich social clique must be celebrating by now since by floating the Pound against the Dollar, the $100 became $300 in a split second and still counting, they have tripled their revenues while the loses of the ordinary South Sudanese tripled upward as well and if the situation persists, all the poor’s money in few month should land in the hands of our new rich and the foreign traders,” he warned.
The looters have turned South Sudan – a country viewed by many economists as an African Dubai – into a country of beggars where our welfare as a nation will depend on foreign aid for decades to come.
All the looters will do is to use their loot to build their empires when the nation crumbled.
“In a nutshell, you will be left with nothing and these rich will come in another role to employ you and force you to work for them in a way or another and squarely just for your living.” He said.
Asking him whether he dislikes capitalism idea, he categorically elaborates, “No, we are not against capitalism, but we are against the malicious ways these people has acquired their capitals and wealth and the way they are trying to invest it on the same people they have stolen it from.”
South Sudan economic new day yesterday breathed an unfavorable air. Alfred Wani – a South Sudanese ordinary citizen living in Juba – woke up to a new face of economic game. He went to change his 2,000 SSP in the local black market only to realize that he lost 65 percent of his money value. Wani squarely put his anger on South Sudan President Salva Kiir for incompetence. For him, he will generate over 10, 000 SSP to in order to get at least 300 USD to send to his daughter who stranded in Kampala, Uganda. Business is not as usual.
“Mr. Wani will be forced to pay close to 100 SSP per plate of ‘fuul’ in Juba Loklogo restaurant, not the previous 15 SSP as usual,”
“As a citizen of this country, you should wonder how this new social rich class did form itself from nothing within ten years and now we have billionaires and millionaires who didn’t have even a goat in the last ten years.”
He strongly warns that if the clique of fraudulent are allowed to overtake the country’s main economic sectors illegally for enrichment, we are on the edge of total economic collapse.
To rub salt into injury, our local banking system is dominated by unauthorized foreign bankers doing dirty work under the carpet in the nose of central Bank of South Sudan. They have now extended their dirty hands on to our communication system, hotels, and our fuel.
Bad management of our economy and corruption shoot up the price of commodities in Juba. And prices increase each day. A kilo of meat is now a salary of a watchman, what a nation!
“Wonder not, it is not the hard work nor it is the smart guts or brains but it is the magnitude of theft, corruption, fraudulent practices, fake contracts, fake companies, public money laundry to our most corrupt neighbors where South Sudan money has made whole villages a hub of leisure and first class life. We have nothing in South Sudan; everything has been robbed and saved in foreign countries,” Chuar Juet reveals his frustration.
For the last ten years, South Sudan never produced its local food, about 95 percent of country’s local goods and services have been imported from Uganda and Kenya; giving foreigners a free hand to rob off everything from South Sudanese. With no glimpse of hope in economic improvement, our country will survive on foreign loans.
“We are fed and supplied with imported food items and the entire most needed daily life items through contracts that has been bought and sold in fraudulent ways and no one care whether those commodities or products are good for consummation, safe for health or outdated. It is not those who make money of these fake contracts that dies and bear the health effects leave alone the financial burden but it is the ordinary South Sudanese who by the grave circumstances of the situation, forced to consume and use these outdated products without other options.”
The latest decision taken by South Sudan government floating the country against local currency is fit for developed countries with giant economic stability. Thus, experts say it doesn’t make sense. “Floating the local currency against the dollar is an act always taken by a producing country, with sustainable economy, that’s at peace and prospering. Are we currently producing anything? Is the oil sector working effectively and producing its 98% share of our revenue?”
“Aren’t we at war that has consumed nearly everything and our 2/3 of the population being fed by the UN? How do you float your local currency when you don’t have a solid economic foundation on the ground and no effective competing market forces that can compete to lower the dollar rate against the local currency in the long run if this what they mean?” Chuar questioned the rationale floating the local currency.
The decision is seen to greatly affect the future economic sector if this habit has to continue. The poor will continue to live on the mercy of the rich, the middle class too are not spared in this poor economical miscalculations.
“In an ailing and unsustainable economy, the so-called $20 million injection from the central bank to commercial banks are not enough and are not sustainable hence the 20 million and what will be taken from the poor South Sudanese are all ending in the hands of the rich and their greedy regional friends.”
Mr. Chuar Juet ends with call on Juba regime reverse the whole joke of floating the local currency and instead put in place better policies that will improve the immediate economic hardship. Auctioning millions of US dollars in black market is just an insult to the nation; it makes no common sense.
“Well, unless the same hawks reversed their decision or has decided fearfully to let the peace agreement to materialize as scheduled, where oil production will resume and where the international donors and the investors may offer an emergency conditional funding for peace implementation and rescue to the ailing economy if not the collapsing country, and there we might have a chance of good survival even though with that, the false rich clique will have already gotten away with what they have stolen.”
As peace is delayed, more lives are to be lost and thousands will be internally displaced while famine is looming nationwide.
Elbow Chuol is Nyamilepedia correspondent and can be reached via elbow.chuol@gmail.com
