The Chairperson of the Sub-Committee on Macroeconomic Policy at the Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA), Dr. Lual A. Achuek, said he will recommend that the House direct the government to make the central bank directly pay government employees to address the persistent issue of delayed salaries.
Speaking during the public hearing on the 2025/2026 fiscal budget last week, Dr. Achuek wondered why salaries are delayed, yet government revenues have exceeded projections.
“This year we are going to recommend what we call an irrevocable standing order where the central bank, not anybody else, at the end of the month, salaries must be paid, especially for those who have done the biometrics,” he stated. “Your actual money, not slip advice, must come to your account from the central bank at the end of every month, not the Ministry of Finance.”
“We will urge the Ministry of Public Service to check every three months to eliminate people from the payroll if there are deaths,” Dr. Achuek added.
The policy analyst also said that the proposed reforms aim to eliminate administrative delays to ensure that civil servants receive their pay on time.
Achuek also acknowledged institutional weaknesses within Parliament itself, suggesting that lawmakers have sometimes hesitated to fully exercise their oversight powers.
For his part, Aggrey Tisa Sabuni, a technical advisor for revenue matters at the South Sudan Revenue Authority (SSRA), said the reason the Bank of South Sudan (BOSS) does not have foreign currency reservoirs and liquidity to pay civil servants is related to how the sale of crude oil is managed.
“The pertinent question relates to the current liquidity crisis. I made remarks regarding how the BOSS found itself unable to have access to foreign reserves, because the finance ministry did not also have foreign reserves which could be shifted to the central bank. I think what needs to be done is to come to grips with the way we are managing the oil sector,” he explained. “Oil used to be sold by a marketing committee, and I think it is time for that committee to be activated, so that the tendency of selling oil in the form of foreign currency comes first to the government before it goes out. The suppliers and vendors to the government, according to the regulations BOSS, do not deserve to be paid in foreign currency; they should be paid in the national currency. First, let the government earn the dollars, benefit from the dollars as money, and as a reserve.”
“If we have made mistakes in the past by deviating from the oil marketing arrangement by the government, it is time now that we go back to those old practices where we had no problems in the central bank, which also acts as a supplier of reserves for commercial banks, which in turn supply the business community,” Tisa added.
He urged that domestic transactions be done in the local currency.