Another laundry load for donors

Editorial, The Khartoum Monitor

Sept 28, 2005 — The governor of the Bank of Sudan has announced that the central bank is ready to issue the new national currency in the first quarter of next year if funds are made available. The governor blamed the delays on the IGAD partners and donors who have not so far availed a “single pence” as reported by Al Ayam Arabic daily.

The message is clear. Both IGAD partners and international donors should meet the cost or we should forget about the new currency. What an easy assignment our central bank governor is undertaking! Our central authorities seem to have become professional beggars and have developed dependency syndrome even over matters they could easily tackle.

The governor of the Bank of Sudan should better state out openly that the north is not ready to go back to the earlier pound system because that contradicts with Islamization of financial institutions in the country. The governor is seemingly under pressure from hard-line fundamentalists.

Having no funds is a lame and naive excuse. Could the governor tell us how Sudan managed to shift from the pound system into the current Dinar system? Who paid for the cost? Was it the international community through donors? The answer is NO. It is to be recalled that by the time Sudan was making the shift it was under economic, military and diplomatic siege. When the shift was made, Sudan was not producing and exporting oil. Our national coffer was in a bad shape by then. Today, the dollar is getting weaker week after week in the face of the Dinar that grows stronger day after day. Again, what is about the modern currency-printing house that Sudan owns? Could it not print the new currency? If it could print the Dinar, why not print the Pound?

The overall intention of the governor is crystal clear. It is all about lack of political will to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with sincerity. These are seemingly well-coordinated tactics to give another slap on the face of the SPLM and the CPA. Nobody around the globe will believe that Sudan has no money to implement the new currency scheme. The governor’s statement shifts attention immediately to the ministry of energy and mining. The old but ever renewing questions resurfaces once again. Where on earth does the Sudanese oil money go? This is the money that should finance the process of implementing the new currency scheme, not the IGAD partners or international donors.

The governor is earnestly urged not make of Sudan a laughing buffoon in the eyes of the world community. He cannot be sitting on bundles of oil money and yet stretch out his arm to beg globally. The simple truth is that the inner motive of the governor on the new currency issue is exposed. The governor should give the issue a second thought. Heaven knows, he may come up with a sophisticated and highly digitalized tricks and tactics capable of dazzling the eyes of the international donors. These outdated analogue tricks won’t work.