South Sudan Agricultural Bank Delivers Food Items To Be Sold At Subsidised Prices/FILE PHOTO

The army will soon no longer be importing food from the neighboring countries.

This is according to a new project approved by the Council of Ministers.

Since 2005, the ministry of defense has been buying food from the region, particularly, Uganda, to feed its army.

However, with the biting economic crisis, it has reportedly been unable to secure food due to the scarcity of dollar.

According to the deputy minister of information – Lily Albino – the move is also aimed at reducing dependency on the region.

“The ministry is thinking of encouraging local production and growth of our market,” she told the media after Friday’s Council of Ministers meeting.

She said the project will be implemented together with the Ministry of Finance.

“It will also reduce reliance on food from outside and reliance on hard currency in order to import food,” stressed Ms Albino.

But the food procurements have been reportedly riddled with malpractices, with some individual senior SPLA officers, getting away with hundreds of millions of dollars without any delivery.

In order to avoid recurrence of this, Ms Albino said the ministry has been advised to ensure that the local food purchase is handled properly through supervision.

With the ongoing conflict which has interrupted local food production across the country, it is not clear how this policy will be successful.