Sudan to build ports, boost investment – minister
Sept 14, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan will double foreign investment and exports in its non-oil sectors and is planning to build new ports and sell stakes in state-owned companies, the state minister for investment said on Wednesday.
Africa’s largest country aims to create jobs and improve living standards by boosting economic performance after the end of a north-south civil war which lasted more than two decades, senior officials have said.
State Minister for Investment Abdalla Hassan Eisa told Reuters at an investment conference in Khartoum that foreign direct investment in the non-oil sector would increase to around $2.8 billion in 2005 from $1.4 billion the previous year.
Exports in non-oil products would increase to around $2 billion by the end of 2005 from $1 billion last year, he added.
“The investment is coming in all areas (of the economy),” he said, adding the sectors attracting investor interest included construction, tourism, financial services, transportation and energy.
Plans for Sudan’s tourism industry include attracting visitors to safari holidays in the south of the country and little-visited pyramids in the north, Eisa said.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Sales of stakes in state-owned assets would include Sudan’s national carrier Sudan Airways, Eisa said, adding that the government would keep 25 percent of the company and foreign investors would be able to buy up to 49 percent.
“Sudan Airways is preparing itself for a strategic investor,” he said without mentioning a timeframe for the sale.
Companies and international organisations working in Sudan complain that goods imported into the country face serious delays at the country’s one port at Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
“Now we are building new ports … We are trying to increase efficiency between the different departments,” Eisa said.
After a new port is built near Port Sudan the government would consider building others, he added.
U.S. sanctions on Sudan had not seriously affected the country, said Eisa and Elamin el-Hindi, the investment ministry official in charge of relations with international economic bodies.
Hindi said the sanctions mean U.S. companies will lose out because they will join late in investing in Sudan, a budding oil producer which faces a separate rebellion in the western Darfur region and another in the east.
“There is a price for not being here on time … The Americans have missed a great opportunity,” Hindi said.
The last U.S. ambassador left Khartoum in 1997 after the United States imposed sanctions on Sudan for what it said was its support for terrorism.
Sudan’s ties with the United States have improved as the ruling party and former southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) moved to end the civil war, which killed 2 million people, mainly through disease and hunger.
(Reuters)