Under pressure, Ngor and Ohisa in joint initiative to fight inflation
The ministry of finance and planning said the country has enough reserves to address the challenges caused by the volatile exchange rate.
Their vow came just one day after South Sudan’s business community urged President Kiir to remove the heads of these organizations.
“We have reached a concrete solution to avail dollars into the market to address the high inflation,” Dier Tong Ngor, Minister for Finance and Planning told to journalists after meeting with Salva Kiir on Friday.
He added that they would soon inject enough dollars into the market to neutralise the high demand for hard currency and lower consumer prices in the market.
Meanwhile, the governor of the Bank of South Sudan, Johnny Ohisa Damian said the bank would fund the importation of food commodities to South Sudan’s markets, as quoted by the presidential press unit.
Also, a delegation from Uganda led by Lt Gen James Mugira held discussions with President Kiir and promised to supply South Sudan with basic commodities.
Mugira said the move would flood the markets in South Sudan with commodities that will see the prices falling in a bid to strengthen bilateral relations with the country.
On Thursday, Morris Madut, the Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Juba said the country must focus on building the local capacity to generate enough exports to bring in dollars.
He said the best solution to the current economic crisis was increasing local food production so that food items would be available within the country at a lower cost instead of depending on imported food from the neighboring countries.
Dr. Abraham Maliet Mamer, the economic advisor for the economic cluster challenged the Ministry of Finance to go out and make money instead of sitting back and spending.
He called for the revision of the importation tariffs and that perishable commodities like tomatoes and onions that the citizens can produce locally.
The Bank of South Sudan recently paused dollar auction saying it had detected irregulairites from commercial banks and forex bureaus.
On Wednesday, the bank announced dollar auction again and carried out an auction on Thursday in an attempt to lower commodity prices and save the struggling economy.
