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Washington, April 23, 2012 - On Wednesday, in the historic Treaty Room of the U.S. State Department, Washington DC, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Hon. Kosti Manibe Ngai, signed the IMF and World Bank Articles of Agreement which enabled the Republic of South Sudan to become the 188th member of these institutions.
"It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that the Republic of South Sudan has become a member of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund" said Hon. Kosti Manibe Ngai. "These are two organizations whose mandate, values and vision so closely match the developmental ambitions of our people and the aspirations of our newly formed Government" he added.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde welcomed the Republic of South Sudan into the institutions, noting "South Sudan faces enormous challenges, and the IMF will do its best to assist the country in setting up the foundations for economic stability and growth in the period ahead."
Upon signing the Articles of Agreement and Conventions, South Sudan also became a member of other organizations in the World Bank Group, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Development Association (IDA), the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
"I am very pleased to welcome South Sudan, the world’s newest country as our newest member of the World Bank Group, to help it manage and resolve its many formidable development challenges while it also builds a broad national coalition to secure lasting peace and prosperity, " said Obiageli Ezekwesili, the World Bank’s Vice President for Africa.
Hon. Kosti Manibe thanked both Ms. Lagarde and Ms. Ezekwesili and stressed that "South Sudan has come a long way in a short period of time, but we will continue to work hard with our partners in the international community to ensure a prosperous future for all of the people of South Sudan."
CONTACT:
Abraham Diing Akoi
Economic Policy Management and Media Relations
Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning
Republic of South Sudan
E-mail:
aakoi3@gmail.com
Mobile. +211 955 933 648
.
By Katrina Manson in Nairobi and Andrew England in Johannesburg
South Sudan will seek Chinese funds to build an alternative oil pipeline so that it no longer depends on the north to export its oil, a senior official said, ahead of a presidential visit to Beijing.
Pagan Amum, lead negotiator for South Sudan, told the Financial Times that President Salva Kiir would raise the prospect of Chinese financing days after fighting over an oil field destroyed key infrastructure and threatened to reignite war between Khartoum and Juba.
Mr Kiir will meet his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao as part of a five-day visit that starts on Monday in a tour that could be critical to South Sudan’s economic survival.
“It could be a consortium and China could join. They are positive, they are looking into it, they have agreed to provide South Sudan with technical assistance in building an alternative pipeline,” said Mr Amum, adding South Sudan is unlikely ever to resume crude exports through Sudan. “Financing would not be a problem because we would be using future sales.”
Analysts say both Sudanese and international mediators have long hoped China, which is invested on both sides of the border, might play a more decisive role in negotiations between the former foes, who separated last year following decades of civil war.
A failure to determine everything from the border to deals over oil, which was produced in the South and exported through the north until South Sudan halted production in February, has plunged the pair back into conflict.
International Crisis Group said in a report this month that China had failed to convince the South to commit itself to exporting oil pumped from Chinese-built facilities in the South via Chinese-built infrastructure in the north, in new oil production deals signed with Juba in January. “I don’t think our oil will flow through Sudan any more again,” said Mr Amum.
Two months after saying there were “difficulties” with the fledgling China-Juba relationship, Mr Amum told the FT his nation considered its ties with Beijing as “the most strategic relations South Sudan will have with any other country”.
Diplomats caution relations with China are still strained, however. The Chinese “were very very hurt”, a foreign diplomat told the FT, by Juba’s February expulsion of the head of Chinese-led oil consortium Petrodar over accusations the group helped the north divert southern oil.
Chinese diplomats have in any case struggled to grasp the complexity of more than a year of oil talks, which are characterised by incendiary posturing and seemingly suicidal actions: they were aghast when South Sudan shut down its entire 350,000 barrel a day production in February, risking China’s investments and depriving it of supply.
Northern infrastructure has also been hit by the fighting. Satellite imagery of oil facilities in Heglig following last week’s southern invasion suggests damage to key pipeline infrastructure may halt all oil flows.
Both economies are in a race against time, as the halt in oil production and transit fees bring their oil-dependent economies to the brink of collapse. South Sudan relies on oil for 98 per cent of its declared revenues and dollars are already drying up in both Khartoum and Juba, risking massive depreciation in both currencies.
Juba officials have scrambled to seek loans from Africa, Europe and Asia in the interim. Mr Amum, who was in Johannesburg to see if South Africa might structure a consortium to build a pipeline to Kenya or Djibouti that would also involve Japan, insisted South Sudan can survive.
“We are in a situation where we don’t need to be producing the oil now because we can have a future sale of oil – we have the reserves; everybody knows the oil will flow after the construction of the pipeline,” said Mr Amum.
Unlike other Juba officials who have claimed a pipeline could be built within seven months, Mr Amum gave a more realistic timeframe, saying it would take between 30 months and four years.
International officials caution, however, that commercial rates on loans could bankrupt the country, while mortgaging future oil revenues risks using up all its petrodollars to secure oil exports, instead of financing sorely needed development in roads, health and education in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
By Faridah Kulabako, Daily Monitor
A new partnership between Centenary Bank and Ivory Bank is likely to ease trade between Uganda and South Sudan as the two banks move to ease banking services for traders in the two countries.
The banks recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to share banking services, promote commercial links as well as exchange banking information and experiences.
Under the arrangement, traders will be able to deposit money in Uganda’s Centenary Bank but access it through Ivory Bank in South Sudan and vise-versa.
“Centenary Bank has a big number of clients who do business in South Sudan and the same applies to Ivory Bank. We want to save traders the burden and risks of carrying cash,” Centenary Bank managing director, Mr Fabian Kasi told Daily Monitor yesterday.
Under the deal, Centenary Bank will also help its South Sudan counterpart in capacity building to enable it modernise its banking services in compliance with the best standard practices.
fkulabako@ug.nationmedia.com
By Karim Sadek, Daily Monitor
The challenge of achieving long-term food security in Africa is real and the need is urgent. Whilst the efforts of international advocacy groups are valuable in raising awareness, we must distinguish between cases of land grab and cases where real change will be delivered through responsible investment in sustainable agricultural businesses and related infrastructure.
That latter thesis is at the heart of Concord, an agri-business created in South Sudan and referenced in Andrea Bohnstedt’s comment piece in the Star on March 17. The project is sustainably developing 250,000 acres of land to help improve food security and impart tangible socio-economic benefits to the surrounding community.
Concord, based in Unity State in South Sudan, is established on land obtained under a 25-year lease granted by the Government of South Sudan in 2009, ensuring land ownership is retained by the host country.
We are mandated to fulfil specific requirements under the contract to ensure the investment is beneficial to the local community and host country. As agreed, we will grow desperately needed crops including wheat, sorghum and maize, all of it for local consumption.
We believe large-scale farming using global best practices is the most efficient, scalable and sustainable way to achieve food security while ensuring that smallholders and pastoralist migrants have access to land and resources as well as employment opportunities.
Naturally, this point of view is not shared by everyone, certainly not the Oakland Institute, but ultimately, African nations need to depend less on inadequate development techniques and handouts and instead tap into innovative models presented through responsibly and ethically deployed private capital.
To put things in perspective, crop exports from South Sudan are currently not regionally or globally competitive. The direct cost of production is $525 per acre, compared to an average $325 per acre in developed agricultural economies (based on the same levels of crop inputs).
The capital cost of development on site amounts to $375 to $400 per acre, compared to an average of $225 to $250 per acre in a developed agricultural economy. Transport costs, too, are amongst the most expensive in the world. Shipping a single 40ft container of agricultural equipment costs over $22,000 to clear and transport from the port of Mombasa to the project site.
Low current output, alongside substantial production and transport costs, compounded by the impact of unscrupulous middlemen, are reflected in the exceptional prices South Sudanese pay at market. In view of these dynamics, the urgent demand for safe, healthy and affordable food in South Sudan and a desire by government to curb imports, Concord was entirely conceived and built to serve local needs. To date, Citadel Capital has invested $25 million in the project. With the need to transfer knowledge to South Sudanese staff and build critical infrastructure, Concord will reach commercial viability in years, not months.
This demonstrates our commitment to generating superior long-term returns through long-term investing that leaves the communities in which we do business better than we found them. Our goal is to make a profit, and thereby to help South Sudan address its pressing development challenges as a responsible development partner. That’s why we are re-investing a proportion of our profits in the local community, following community consultation on local priorities in order to improve livelihoods.
That’s also why Concord will only cultivate 120,000 acres of the total 250,000 acre site, which we will develop in a checkerboard form to respect the rights of the Fallata pastoralists, enabling them to maintain their annual migration routes and also preserve critical bio-diversity on site.
Concord’s current full-time workforce has a 25 per cent local component, far higher than other similar projects in South Sudan. Naturally, we would prefer to hire locally rather than engage foreign staff given the cost differential.
That is challenging at this stage of South Sudan’s development due to a shallow local talent pool with the required skills, an issue we are addressing through skills and knowledge transfer to build local capacity to work productively on the project.
Bearing in mind the need to recruit specialist skills now whilst we build local capacity for the long term, we are tapping into an existing African talent base in mechanised farming from Zimbabwe. Over time, this investment in knowledge transfer will empower local residents with skills.
Just as Concord will provide a sustainable development template to help build food security in Africa’s newest nation, the workers it trains will become tomorrow’s leading agronomists, managers and foremen on the farms that will increasingly appear on the landscape to replicate what we hope will be an outstanding success story.
Mr Sadek is Managing Director at Citadel Capital, a private equity firm in Africa.
By VICTOR JUMA, Business Daily
Dealers in new cars are set to export their rivalry to regional markets where they are expanding to grow sales and cut their reliance on Kenya.
DT Dobie, Foton East Africa, and Car & General plan to invest millions of shillings to set up branches and sign up dealership agreements in Tanzania and South Sudan.
General Motors East Africa (GMEA) dominates the new vehicle export market, with the expansion of other dealers set to increase competition in the segment seen as having significant growth potential due to the discovery of oil and gas in the region.
“We plan to sign an agreement with a dealer in Juba (this week) to kick off our expansion into South Sudan,” said Calvin Guo, the managing director of Foton East Africa.
Foton said it will be exporting its pick-ups and light commercial trucks to South Sudan where DT Dobie and Car & General plan to venture into in the next few months.
Though Kenya accounts for most of the sales among the new vehicle dealers, the regional economies are seen as providing major growth opportunities on the back of major mineral resources including Uganda’s oil find and Tanzania’s gas deposits.
Data from the Kenya Motor Industry Association (KMI) shows that export sales accounts for about four per cent of the new vehicle dealer’s sales, with GMEA controlling more than half of the regional sales with its Isuzu bus and commercial trucks.
Kenyan firms are attracted by South Sudan’s economic prospects, with oil expected to fuel the country’s development in the coming years.
Poor infrastructure
Donors such as the UK are also extending millions of dollars in grants and soft loans to the new government to develop education and health facilities and setup administrative structures.
“The main challenge in South Sudan is the poor infrastructure, including roads and we will therefore start exporting commercial vehicles like pick-ups to that market,” said Keld Olsen, the director of sales and marketing at DT Dobie.
Car & General says it is shopping for land in South Sudan where it intends to start operations from the scratch by August targeting motorcycle sales among other business lines.
Apart from South Sudan, Foton is expanding into the Tanzanian market where it is investing about Sh125 million to set up three branches.
The Chinese firm, which already has operations in Kenya and Uganda, says it will serve the region from its Sh1.2 billion Nairobi assembly plant.
Foton is betting on its relatively cheaper commercial truck brands to grab market share from Japanese and western brands such as Nissan, Scania, Isuzu, Mercedes, and Mitsubishi.
In Kenya, the dealers continue to record lower sales driven by the high interest rates and the government’s austerity measures that have cut new vehicle purchases.
In the first two months of the year, the dealers’ sales dropped 13.5 per cent to 1,535 units compared to 1,775 units in a similar period the previous year.
The bulk of new vehicle purchases are financed through bank loans, hence the sharp rise in interest rates has a direct effect on showroom prices.
vjuma@ke.nationmedia.com
AFP
KHARTOUM, Apr 3 – Sudan’s industry minister announced his resignation on Tuesday after the opening of Africa’s biggest sugar factory was postponed, which he blamed on US economic sanctions.
President Omar al-Bashir was to inaugurate on Thursday the showcase facility in White Nile state before an international audience from the Islamic Development Bank, which has been meeting in the Sudanese capital Khartoum this week.
Slick green invitation packets had already been sent out.
But Industry Ministry Abdelwahab Mohammed Osman said computer software needed to run the facility “is not ready because of American sanctions.”
In 1997 the United States imposed a trade embargo on Sudan over human rights and other concerns.
White Nile Sugar placed notices in local newspapers which also cited US sanctions for the postponement.
“I offer my resignation before the president of the republic and I take the full responsibility for this,” Osman said in a statement to the press, while noting that the plant’s delayed opening had affected national morale.
Bashir rejected the resignation, and said a committee will investigate why the factory opening has been held up, the official SUNA news agency reported.
Osman took on the industry portfolio during a cabinet reshuffle in December.
White Nile Sugar announced earlier that it aimed to produce 450,000 tonnes of sugar annually and 60 million litres (13 million gallons) of ethanol.
Sudan’s Kenana Sugar is the largest shareholder, with a 30 percent stake. The Sudanese government has a 35 percent share in Kenana while the Kuwait Investment Authority has 31 percent.
Increased exports of sugar form part of the government’s plan to recoup revenue lost when South Sudan separated last July, taking with it about 75 percent of oil production.
Southern oil represented more than one-third of the Khartoum government’s revenues, and its biggest source of hard currency, leaving the government struggling for alternatives.
14:00 | 2012-03-24
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Iranian foreign ministry dismissed media allegations claiming that Iran has sent weapons to Sudan, and said these claims are part of the plots hatched by the bullying powers to overshadow and undermine the Iranian nation's achievements and progress.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast strongly rejected the claims made by some western media over Iran's dispatch of weapons to Sudan. Stressing Iran's policy on negotiation not aggression, Mehman-Parast termed the aims behind those claims as suspicious. By dissemination of these baseless claims, the bullying powers are to keep a lid on the achievements gained by the Iranian nation despite western sanctions on the country, Mehman-Parast said on Friday.
Pete Willows | 22 March 2012 Bikya Masr
CAIRO: Work began last week on a $26.6 million, five-year project to clear the rivers of Greater Bahr-el Gazal and Unity State to make them navigable by boat.
South Sudan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation has signed memorandums of understanding with the Egyptian Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the work will be carried out by the MAM Group an Egyptian company.
William Gatjang Gieng, Unity State Minister of Environments and Natural Resources in Unity, said that the teams from the Egyptian company are working to deepen the river to allow more boats to transport goods and people.
South Sudan has next to no infrastructure but relies heavily on importing foods and other goods. The closure of the border with north Sudan since South Sudan’s independence in July last year has led to massive increases in the cost of goods.
This has dramatically affected states like Unity which border the Sudan. Goods now have to be transported all the way from Uganda and Kenya on South Sudan’s southern border.
Fuel increases, poor transport networks and border check points have culminated in high prices of some consumer goods trebling over the last year. The government hopes that improving river transport will allow goods and services to flow more freely and make it easier to trade and do business.
One team will dredge the Naam River from Rubkotna junction in Unity State to Lake No just north of the Sudd swamp, where the Bahr el Ghazal River meets the River Kiir.
Another project will start from Wetmachar Achol in Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal State, to Wangkeay Bridge.
The waterways in Unity State were more passable in the 1980’s but became blocked during South Sudan’s two-decade war with Khartoum, now only allowing small shallow boats to pass.
Mohamed Rajaf, a retired General from the Egyptian army, has been contracted by the Egyptian government to complete the project. He confirmed that his company has already started operations in the Unity State.
Rajaf said that political tensions between Egypt, the Sudan and South Sudan had delayed the project by about five months.
The dredging barges for the project were constructed in Alexandria, Egypt then transported to Kosti a Sudanese town on the White Nile over land.
In Kosti the barges were constructed and went south along the White Nile into South Sudan and to Malakal in Upper Nile State. From there the barges travelled to Lake No and then onto Rubkotna junction in Unity state.
South Sudan and its counterpart the Egyptian government will officially inaugurate Unity State project by next week.
By Bol Detion-Alier-Abiu
If only the debate about corruption and its evils can go away. But just like doctors say, dirt is good and so is corruption, in a way. Looking at it from a lay man’s point of view, it sounds fantastic. In actual fact the dirt helps the body build up immunity against infections, some even life threatening.
It occurs at all levels of society, from local and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions, large and small businesses, military and other services and so on. This is endemic and there is no end in sight. Many of the leaders find political capital; even hold colleagues at ransom/blackmail just to get and keep power.
At the risk of appearing to be an enabler/appeaser, I think all this pilfered money should be given proper channels through which it can be helpful in South Sudan, not only to the politicians and their ‘causes’ but to the societies and communities in which they come from. Money should be able to easily flow back to the communities in the form of investments. It is no secret that some underdeveloped countries’ development were mainly due to their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy where many businessmen and politicians with shoddy dealings deposit huge amounts of money, mostly stolen, in their economies. From the Nazis of old to modern day democratic dictators, all are guilty!
My idea is that since apparently no one is clean from this problem, then the governments should put in place avenues through which these embezzled funds are used productively for the good of the country - South Sudan. Instead of naming, shunning and shaming, confiscating property and money (which is also in turn stolen) why not do this.Let them build schools, provide low cost housing and many more. This is very feasible in the long-run because actual investments are made which are transferable, taxable, can be listed on the stock exchange, and so forth. This will create employment, increase GDP, private co-finance and what have you. Government officials should be given more leeway to setup private businesses without having to be impeded by investigations and inquiries over their wealth. This will encourage innovation and positive thinking. Then perhaps all of us will benefit from this scourge and not just a few
by Joseph Edward , Ground Report
The two parties stressed there continue commitment to the strategic partnership and to jointly promote development, peace, security and stability in south Sudan, Ethiopia and Africa general.
Addressing the meeting, Nhial said that they will continue talks with Ethiopia particularly on the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), health, environment, energy and science and technology. He reiterated commitment to relations between South Sudan and Ethiopia. The agreements signed are important steps in strengthening the partnership between the two countries” Nhial was quoted
The Ethiopian delegation to the meeting signed At the conclusion of the meeting the parties have signed eight [8] agreements including strategic partnership document .the two parties foresee that these Agreement and strategic partnership document would be foundation of for further relation and economic integration of the two nations.
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