Corruption, insecurity threaten Sudan’s CPA
By Tony Kago
Nov 12, 2006 (NAIROBI) — Corruption, insecurity and bad faith on the part of the Khartoum government in sharing oil profits is slowing Southern Sudan’s recovery from years of civil war.
A two-day governors’ conference on the country’s oil industry was told that Juba, the capital of the Government of Southern Sudan, is still plagued by insecurity while the political elite in Khartoum and Juba were accused of waiting in the wings to pocket oil dollars.
(East African)
This was the first soul-searching meeting since the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed in Nairobi signifying the end of two decades of fighting.
Both the national government and the Government of Southern Sudan were asked to lift all confidentiality clauses on oil contracts and to incorporate all state revenues and expenditures into the country’s budget and make them public as agreed in the the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
But government representatives insisted that the money was on budget and had been disbursed.
The undersecretary in charge of the national economy at Sudan’s Ministry of Finance, Alsheikh Almak, said the share transferred to the government in the South from oil exports between January and August was $571.37 million, while for August alone it stood at $98.2 million.
The share has been rising steadily as the total direct transfer to Southern Sudan from January to April amounted to $348.81 million.
Mr Almak said the transfer for petrol revenues for May stood at $93.1 million.
But as the dollars flow in, the avenues of grand corruption are expanding. The reality of how corruption has seeped into the government was brought home by the suspension of five senior Ministry of Finance officials suspected of buying vehicles at inflated prices.
Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir suspended Finance Undersecretary Isaac Makur, Economic Planning Undersecretary Francis Lotio, Director of the Budget Peter Laany, Director of Taxation Micheal Abola and his deputy Tilet Plating over the scandal.
As the oil conference was going on, local newspapers were awash with stories of insecurity. The Juba Post reported that 23 people had been killed in separate incidents within one week.
The killings along the roads leading to Juba were attributed to Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) rebels. Cabinet minister Deng Alor was quoted as saying 15 SAF allied soldiers from the north and Southern Sudan had been arrested in connection with the raids.
In September, unknown gunmen killed 38 civilians in yet another series of attacks in Southern Sudan. Interior Minister Paul Mayom Akech said that among those killed in the five attacks were women and children while several cars were destroyed on the road between Juba and the eastern bank of the Nile.
He refused to speculate on who might have carried out the attacks. But Southern Sudan is hosting peace talks between neighbouring Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, long based in lawless parts of the south and often blamed for violence there.
Outgoing United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan is worried that the peace pact that ended a 21 year old civil war in the south is on the verge of collapse, with important pledges ignored or circumvented.
The agreement, if implemented, could signal a major change in Sudan including power and wealth sharing and integration of security forces.
But some of the basic conditions – including election planning and dividing oil revenues – have not been met as set out in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Khartoum government and the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement.
The UN has some 10,000 peacekeepers in the south to monitor the agreement and help train police officers, human rights workers and provide other services.
There has been little reconstruction in Juba more than a year after the CPA was signed. However, George Nyanja a former Kenyan MP and an architect who has clinched deals to undertake major projects in the south, said it was still too early to expect a major boom.
“We are still on the drawing board, doing contracts and in some cases doing the drawings. Once this is over, you are going to see major explosion,” Mr Nyanja said at Juba International Airport on his way to Rumbek.
The low activity on the ground was also attributed to the fact that donors have not lived up to their pledges, committing only $430 million of the $2.6 billion needed for reconstruction.
Mr Annan has in the past complained that multidonor trust funds administered by the World Bank, “have proved ill-suited to meet immediate post conflict requirements.”
During the conference, Kenya’s Gen (Rtd) Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the chief mediator of the Intergovernmental Agency on Development (IGAD) peace process that culminated in the signing of the CPA, said the fruits of the agreement would only be seen once there was more food, schools and hospitals.
The Government of Southern Sudan vice president Gen Dr Riek Machar, who officially opened the conference organised by the New Sudanese Indigenous NGOs Network (NESI Network) and European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS), said they did not wish to see oil overshadow other sectors of the economy.
Oil companies were asked to adhere to best practices by ensuring there was no environmental degradation.
The State Minister for energy and Mining, Angelina Teny, said the problems bedevilling the sector were due to the fact that the National Petroleum Commission had yet to be set up as envisaged by the CPA.
She said the dispute over who were the rightful owners of the various concessions has yet to be resolved.
Last year, Sudan exported nearly $4.2 billion’s worth of oil, accounting for roughly 85 per cent of its export revenue. It is estimated the country, whose exports account for 0.6 per cent of the world’s supply of oil, will receive about $7.6 billion in export revenue this year.
The talks, held just over a week ago, were attended by top government representatives, MPs, donors, civil society and human rights groups. They saw the Khartoum government accused of keeping oil revenues for itself, of being secretive about contracts signed during the conflict and keeping the information on revenues under wraps.
(East African)