Moses Makur Den, Central Bank Governor speaking to the media in Juba on Tuesday, 11th Jan. 2022. Photo: Lou Nelson/Eye Radio

The Central Bank has increased to 13 million dollars, the amount of money it auctions to both forex bureaus and private banks.

The money will be released every week to normalize the foreign exchange rate in the country.

The auction of the hard currency to forex bureaus first started in December 2020 to prevent further depreciation of the South Sudanese pound against the U.S. dollar after prices of food and other basic commodities skyrocketed in the markets.

As of today, 1 dollar sells at about 440 in the parallel or black market while the official rate is roughly 434 SSP.

Previously, the Central Bank auctioned 5 million dollars to both commercial banks and forex bureaus weekly.

The new governor announced that the Central Bank will now auction 5 million dollars to forex bureaus and 8 million for commercial banks respectively.

Moses Makur Deng says the move is to stabilize the market and prevent further depreciation of the South Sudanese pounds against the US dollar.

He spoke to the media in Juba this morning.

“The total is 13 million a week that is what we are going to inject into the market to fight this temporary increase in the dollar rate”, Makur spoke to the media in Juba on Tuesday.

Makur stated that; “We will continue to do that until the dollar is stabilized where we want it to be. We know where we want it to be, we will continue to intervene.”.

South Sudan, an oil-dependent country is already facing its worst economic conditions because it gets much of its hard currency from oil sales.

The current production levels of crude oil have dropped from 250,000 barrels per day to around 175,000 barrels per day.

According to economists, this has reduced the government’s revenue, dwindling the economy.

In September 2020, the second deputy governor of the Bank of South Sudan, Daniel Kech Pouch told reporters that the bank had run out of foreign reserves, bringing the economy to its knees.

This compelled President Salva Kiir to form an economic crisis management committee to devise ways of revitalizing the economy.

One of the remedies was for the Central Bank to inject hard currency into the market.