16 June 2011 By Osman Mirghani Last week, the Sudanese President announced a set
of economic austerity plans to confront the
consequences of secession from the South, which will
be legally established with the declaration of the
"State of Southern Sudan" on the 9th July 2011. In a
speech he delivered before the ruling National
Congress Party, al-Bashir admitted that secession from
the south will have negative economic impacts on the
north, saying "We will lose a portion of the south's
oil, and this will have an impact on the balance of
our foreign trade, because oil revenues constitute a
significant portion of our exports." Following his admission of the upcoming economic
crisis, al-Bashir provided a further shock when he
announced an increase in taxes and reduced public
spending. What al-Bashir failed to say about such
plans was instead expressed by the Khartoum Governor
Dr. Abdul-Rahman al-Khedr, who termed them as
"critical surgery". In statements to Asharq al-Awsat
published on Wednesday, al-Khedr said that the plans
incorporate the partial removal of subsidies on basic
commodities such as gasoline and sugar, as well as
ceasing the imports of some "unnecessary" items, as
the country's revenues of hard currency will decline
dramatically. The reason for this is that the
government will lose 60 – 85 percent of its share of
oil revenues, which will subsequently be owned by the
South. Interestingly, President al-Bashir had said in a
speech at the beginning of February, justifying the
first stage of price increases for gasoline and sugar
that had raised public objections at the beginning of
the year, that the per capita sugar consumption in the
country is considered high because the rich "need to
drink a soft drink more than once per day, and eat
desert after meals." According to such a simplified
economic analysis of the crisis, the government may
have to rename the traditional Sudanese drink entitled
"Hulu-Mur" [sweet] to "Kuz-Mur" [bitter], so that it
is in line with the new austerity plans. Such plans
regard even a "spoonful of sugar" as too much for the
Sudanese. Retuning to the Khartoum Governor's statements,
regarding the Salvation Government's plan to confront
the "negative impacts" of secession from the South,
Dr. al-Khedr emphasized that the government will seek
to explore oil in the North so as to restore what it
lost in the South. He said that the northern
government will pay more attention to natural
resources such as metals, saying that "now we can see
gold in our country on the surface of the ground."
This suggests that in the north the ground now
glitters under the burning rays of the sun, and that
all the helpless Sudanese people have to do is go out
and collect gold from the ground, in order to buy the
sugar, gasoline and other unnecessary commodities they
may require. Even if we believed such words, the
following question arises: What were you doing for the
past 22 years? Why didn't you pay attention to metals,
and why did you leave gold unattended on the surface
of the ground? Most importantly, why did you neglect
agriculture, which is Sudan's real gold and its
strategic wealth? This topic takes us to another relevant issue of
arable land, which the government forcibly bought from
its rightful owners for extremely low prices, and then
sold on to foreign investors for higher prices, so
that the ruling party's brokers could derive benefits.
These days, farmers participating in the Gezira
project – one of the largest agricultural projects in
Sudan – are encountering problems and staging
demonstrations in protest against the government
seizure of their land, without paying proper
compensation. If the government is indeed searching
for alternatives, then instead of neglecting Sudan's
land, wouldn't it have been better to have endeavored
towards agricultural wealth, and used part of Sudan's
previous oil revenues in investments in order to
activate the slogan: "Sudan is the breadbasket of the
world"? This is a slogan we have long heard and
chanted with others across the world ever since we
were children. In statements given to Hurriyet newspaper last
month, former Governor of the Central Bank of Sudan
Saber Mohamed al-Hassan admitted that the Sudanese
economy suffers greatly as a result of reliance on oil
alone, as well as negligence of other economic
resources, especially agriculture. Saber also warned of "the shock" the Sudanese
economy will suffer following the official secession
from the South, and of the sudden subsequent decline
in the state's income of hard currency. Speaking of
the magnitude of foreign debt, estimated at around 37
billion US dollars, the Central Bank Governor said
that Sudan is among the most indebted African
countries. Apart from these problems, the Sudanese consider
corruption to be a major concern. [Over the years] it
became widespread and exhausted the country's
potential, and as a result, commercial and economic
activities are centered mainly in the hands of those
affiliated to the regime. Several younger members of
the ruling National Congress Party warned al-Bashir of
the dangers of the prevailing corruption during a
recent assembly, as it is no longer an individual
phenomenon. Having been sponsored by the government,
corruption spread across different institutions, of
course for the benefit of the inner circle, the
President's associates, and whoever hid behind the
cover of the Islamic regime. Corruption is no longer
secret, and has shifted into a topic of conversation
among the Sudanese people, and this issue will be
further aggravated during the upcoming economic crisis
that will come with secession. The economic crisis has now become a fact before
the eyes of everyone, and there is no way that it can
be denied or considered a figment of the opposition's
imagination, as some of the regime's adherers may
describe it. Therefore, several members of the regime's
leadership has begun to acknowledge the crisis, as
well as the negative impacts of secession from the
south, although they previously denied any negative
impacts, and even regarded the national division as a
common good. The "critical surgery", which the
Khartoum Governor spoke of when describing the
economic measures the government is intending to take,
may become more dangerous in view of the prevailing
domestic climate of unease, as well as the tension in
areas adjacent to the new state of the south, let
alone the aggravation in Darfur and the highly
flammable situation in South Kordofan. If people's
attention is currently drawn to the popular uprisings
and revolutions in Yemen, Syria and Libya, then the
situation in Sudan is approaching a difficult stage in
which anything is possible. Comments 💬 التعليقات |