Jonglei governor dismisses SSP27m loan claim
January 25, 2017 (BOR) – The Governor of South Sudan’s Jonglei state dismissed claims that his government loaned SSP 27 million, creating a large financial deficit in the state.
The total amount of outstanding loan that was shared by the three newly created states was SSP9 million. It was not clear how much of this loan was to be paid by current Jonglei state.
Although Aguer says his government never took the SSP27 million loan.
He claimed it was an accumulation of what he failed to mention, from 2014 till now.
“I think that is ignorance, sometimes when you are ignorance and you get raw information you don’t digest it properly. The loan people are talking about, yes there are liabilities and these liabilities [are] from the previous government, not from this government. If you can add up this liabilities, they can add up to whatever number. But Those liabilities are not loans of the current government of Jonglei state”, Aguer told reporters Tuesday.
“It is not a loan that was taken as cash, so it is not a loan that was taken as cash from the bank, there is no bank that can give 27 million loan. So people mixed up issues. There is no loan of 27 million, [it] is a sum up, you can sum up from 2014, 2015, 2016 and up to now. You sum them up, you will call them liabilities. But within one year, when Philip Aguer became governor, there is no day when the minister went to the bank and took 27 million. That is a lie and it is ignorance”, he added.
According to the state governor, 2016 salaries for all civil servants had been paid, except for December last year.
But the state finance minister, Akech Yen, told journalists last week that the loan, which was to be paid by the state, was an overdraft accumulation.
“27 million, most of this are liabilities that are not even an obligation to be paid but the loan which is there is an accumulation of something which is call overdraft”, he said.
According to Akech, the state planned to pay back SSP1 million monthly.
(ST)