By Deng Machol
JUBA, South Sudan - the central bank of South Sudan has unveiled a plan to regularize forex to stabilize the country's economy.
"These measures are geared towards streamlining the forex exchange trading while mitigating the related currency risks," said Dr .James Alic Garang, the Governor of the Bank of South Sudan.
After decades of conflict, the world's youngest nation became an independent state in 2011 but has continued suffering from social unrest and economic crisis, though the 2018 peace deal was signed, the expectations to re-establish a stable and viable nation have not yet been met.
The country is plagued by hyperinflation due to many years of civil war and climate change.
According to the Bank's governor, this will eventually allow the bank to gather credible and reliable statistics and data to formalize unauthorized dealers into the mainstream forex exchange market.
“Going forward the Bank of South Sudan will coordinate with other regular stakeholders to organize the informal market, especially the umbrella informal market, which currently does sell hard currency outside the purview of the central bank," Alic told the press.
A year ago, the country turned to the International Monetary Fund for help, and they injected more than $500 million to help the central bank stabilize its economy and the parallel market.
He also said The Bank lacks adequate hard currency reserves to peg the exchange rate of the South Sudanese Pound (SSP) against the US Dollar (USD) in response to rising inflation.
“While I can affirm that we have enough to intervene in the market, we do not have the necessary amount to fix our exchange rate,” said Dr. Alic, adding fixing it would also lead to additional difficulties similar to those we experienced before 2015, one of which is the inadequacy of the fixed exchange rate.
South Sudan, whose economy is dependent on oil production is due to go for its first-ever elections next year.