The minister of finance and planning on Tuesday disclosed that his priority is to stabilize market prices before looking into paying salaries, even though civil servants have gone almost 8 months without pay.
Awou Daniel Chuang stated that he does not have sufficient funds to clear the civil servants’ salary arrears.
He made the remarks on Tuesday while addressing the Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) in Juba. He revealed that his ministry is currently struggling with generating revenue as crude oil shipments and sales have been affected by the ongoing war in Sudan.
“What I can tell you is that most of the challenges that we face in finance and planning are related to oil production that has stopped. 70 percent of oil comes from Upper Nile State, mainly from Block 6 and 7,” he revealed. “The rest comes from Ruweng and Unity State in Block 5 and Block 5A. Only around 30 to 35 percent of the oil is flowing. And with the new challenges of the war Sudan, in South Sudan has been struggling for the last few weeks.”
Minister Awou said that they are currently using the little revenues collected by the National Revenue Authority (NRA) to cater for the salaries. He added that the funds collected by the NRA are not enough to clear the salary arrears of civil servants.
“Even before I came to the Ministry of Finance, we were struggling to make sure that we resume oil production. The arrears have accumulated because of that this year. And I know for a fact that over the last few years when the budget was being prepared, there was always a gap between the budget proposed and the realized budget that would be spent,” he explained. “What we are trying to do is, first of all, to stabilize the market. The market has gone very high with the food commodities and the foreign exchange rate. This is what we are doing, to put down the market [prices], and then in the process, of course, whatever little we get, we can use to pay the salaries”
According to the minister, among other challenges the government is facing is the fact that it sometimes operates outside the budget, which affects the running of government activities.
“Most of the time, people also operate outside the budget. So, budget discipline was not being followed. I am happy that the report of the technical committee and the speech of the president mentioned that budget discipline needs to be followed because if it is followed, a lot of things can be done without any difficulty,” Awou stated. “I know that if we do not run within our budget, it is going to be very difficult because some of the institutions will not get anything at all. I have been moving around for the last few days just to see for myself and some of the institutions are not even functioning at all. This is because even their budgeted amount is not going to them simply because it is not there.”
“These are some of the challenges that we have seen but we have to face it,” he concluded.