U.S. officials, Sudanese businessperson discuss sanctions’ effects

August 27, 2016 (KHARTOUM) – An American technical team accompanying The US special envoy Donald Booth in his visit to Khartoum on Thursday discussed with Sudanese businessmen and women the negative impact of sanctions on the goods exempted from sanctions.

In 1997 when the American Administration decide to punish the Sudanese regime for its support of terrorism. The original bill terminated all commercial activities with Sudan but it exempted only one product, Gum Arabic as result of pressures exerted by American industrial groups who wanted to secure their access to this natural product .

Ten years later in 2007 , Washington strengthened the embargo, citing abuses in Darfur which it labelled as genocide. However to ease its negative impact on the ordinary people, the United States Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) since 2010 amended the bill several times and added more exemptions to the list, including agriculture equipment, educational exchange programs and scholarships, personal communications hardware and software including smart phones and laptops.

The vice-president of Sudanese Businessmen and Employers Federation (SBEF) Youssef Ahmed Youssef who took part in the workshop told reporters that the meeting comes in line with the dialogue that Sudanese private sector engaged since several years with American authorities to consider ways to relieve them from the impact of the embargo.

“The workshop discussed the complexities inherent to financial and banking transactions in the sectors exempted from the American sanctions, which now impact the banking dealings with Asian and European banks that were dealing with Sudan,” he said.

Sudanese businessmen say that international banks systematically block their transactions because they fear to be prohibited by trade embargoes and sanctions rules. They add that the foreign and even American banks ignore the list of exemptions granted by the OFAC during the past years.