Central bank announces injection of $20 million to save battered pound

South Sudan’s central bank said Thursday that it would inject 20 million U.S. dollars, an increase from
the previous 13 million dollars, into the economy on a weekly basis in order to strengthen the local
pound against the dollar.
Moses Makur Deng, governor of the Bank of South Sudan (BOSS), said the central bank would auction
the money to commercial banks and forex bureaus starting August 15th this year.
The move is aimed at mopping up excess liquidity that has seen recently the South Sudanese Pound
(SSP) lose value against the dollar.
“The way forward as we speak is that we are going to increase the auction from the current 13 million
dollars to 20 million dollars a week,” Deng told journalists in Juba.
The SSP is currently exchanging at 73 with the dollar in the black market from the previous 43 in January
this year.
Makur blamed this change on capital flight by foreign businesses.
“We are running an economy that depends very much on foreigners either businessmen or companies,
whatever we inject they take it to their countries,” he said.
Makur warned of stern action to be taken on forex bureaus siphoning off dollars they receive during
weekly dollar auction conducted by BOSS.
“We have sent our supervisors to forex bureaus to check the usage of the 5 million dollars given, if it is
proven that the forex that fail to use the money as required, they will be suspended from auction and
the same also applies to commercial banks,” Makur said.