S. Sudan parliament approves $1.6bn budget for FY2019/2020

August 22, 2019 (JUBA) – South Sudan parliament on Wednesday approved a budget of $1.6 billion for the financial year 2019/2020.

Lawmakers earlier declined to approve the budget after it emerged that the country’s civil servants had gone unpaid for nearly a year.

The Finance minister, Salvatore Garang told lawmakers that government had already paid two months salaries to civil servants.

He said it was his ministry’s obligation to pay state workers.

South Sudan, where oil revenues make up nearly 98 percent of the budget, has been reeling an under economic crisis due to civil war.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country after it split from Sudan in 2011, has one of the largest reserves of crude in sub-Saharan Africa, yet only a third of which have been explored.

South Sudan, officials say, presently produces 135,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

But production plummeted when civil war broke out in 2013. A September peace deal is largely holding, but a plan to form a unity government in May was pushed to November.

(ST)