The Economic Future of the Republic of South Sudan
6 min readBy Daniel Machar Dhieu, Juba
March 31, 2015 (SSB) — In my opinion, the main topics of political discussion after peace talks collapse in Ethiopia Capital between government and rebel leadership is health-care financing, educational reform, etc. Despite their importance to many, they represent rearranging deck chairs on the parliamentary affairs.
So what is the main issue? I would say, it is our economic future. Will today’s children and grandchildren enjoy anything near the material comfort, which we ourselves have? If not, what can we do to mitigate the process of deteriorating economic conditions?
The first and more serious problem is the conflict between the material wants and needs of the earth’s growing population and the material resources available on earth. We are entering the period of “peak oil”, when more oil will be pumped out of the earth than at any other time before or after. Petrol oil is now priced at 6 SSP per liter; in coming years, it will surely be higher. New oil reserves are becoming harder to tap.
Additionally, the booming economies of high technology countries such nations will increase demand for petroleum products enormously. If supply cannot meet demand now, the imbalance will become worse in the future. The growing emissions of carbon gases produced by the internal-combustion engine and other devices has raised in the nation’s temperature to the point that polar ice caps are melting, the seas are rising, a lot of much problem become more frequent base on economic in the young nation like south sudan.
The scarcity of oil may be the least of our problems. We may also be facing a crisis in food production. As the country is diverted to ethanol production, supply of others commodities drops and prices rise. People failed to practices crop production in the country and the whole depend on the countries such as Uganda and Kenya to mention but few. Farmland competes with laziness of the people and suburban and exurban development.
The water company’s Limited supplies are likewise diverted to urban use. The water level in aquifers around the nation has dropped significantly no series means to solves this problem. Then there is the problem of waste disposal in our nation we need to address on its. There is the problem of air quality when industrial gases are released into the atmosphere. The list of problems goes on.
Here in South Sudan, we should know how to use things before things got worse I mean our confidence on whatever we are doing because we are already free from any authority. No need of saying the border is close or rate of dollar is high. We are almost establishing oil industry in our nation, but do we have any food industries before?
If not when are we establishing them? Seen South Sudan is bless of many things for development to mention but few, we have river Nile, gold, diamonds, silver and oils these could force development to the nation when we buried corruption in all departments of government level.
There are two important questions when considering electric power. First, how would the power is generated? Second, how would electric power is transported to its point of use? Electricity can be generated in conventional power that can use oil we have here in South Sudan. It can also be generated in nuclear plants that do not discharge such wastes into the atmosphere but leave a toxic residue of spent fuel having a long half-life.
It can be generated also in hydroelectric dams that change the landscape, in geothermal generators, and in photovoltaic cells that turn sunlight into electricity, all these will make a last day of ending of saying there is shortage of power. ‘’start quote, from my point of view, one of the most promising sources is wind energy. Wind is free and renewable. Its capture leaves no detrimental effect on the environment. A disadvantage is that this power source varies with weather conditions. For small-scale producers, the equipment can be expensive but who will work on this department?
What concerns me is the cost of labour. We have a relatively small number of educated people who can work at the fields, but the work need good number of educated workers to work in. Our educated people are too expensive for those tasks. With an average student-loan debt of 30,000 SSP – fifth highest in the nation – the graduates of foreign ’s colleges and universities such as Makerere university and Nairobi university need to pay back the banks and credit-card companies as well as secure housing and other necessities in life.
It takes an estimated annual income of 90,000 SSP to handle the debt payments comfortably; and not everyone can find such a job. Therefore, my idea is that, our students should studies at home South Sudan’s college and graduates here as well prepared to compete in the country economy is hot air as far as i’m concerned. It turns my stomach that the same educators who are fetching high salaries in institutions with soaring tuitions are also cheerleader’s free trade, putting their graduates in direct cost competition with the lower-priced grade of foreign countries and other places.
And they are all “high-minded” people with a strong “ethical” bent! We also need to be thinking of how we can get our own cost structure more in line with the rest of the nations. Our productive economy is weighted with civil war that has attached them to its wealth. Some of the worst are government (the military-industrial complex), the health-care system, financial institutions, our expensive education, and the legal system. There are many sacred cows needing to be culled.
Attractive-looking men and women in suits – professionals all – will be on hand to defend the expensive practices. The word quality will often be heard. If such discussions are held, they might lead to a new consensus in which nation states are allowed to impose good workers on imported goods to achieve certain development objectives.
Here is where one begins to envision a better nation, not just for South Sudanese but also for all of us in the nation. I think political leaders in all countries can agree that people everywhere need a certain material standard of living; and that to become entitled to use of the earth’s resources, they need to be employed in a productive enterprise.
In addition, if the free market does not afford full employment in enterprises of that type, government needs to achieve that result through regulation. A cornerstone of the regulation would be incentives for business to reduce hours of work. With an artificial reduction of work time, supply and demand can achieve a satisfactory result with respect to wages and employment levels.
How would this work? I have proposed a system of employer-specific way on goods imported from low-wage countries that enter South Sudan market. The country rate would take into account the cost differential between production costs in the foreign factory and comparable costs in south Sudan. I would not seek to recover the entire cost differential through rate of that country.
Neither would I calculate the South Sudanese pounds cost because of actual costs where high-priced union labour is involved. Nevertheless, it is justifiable to set a standard for a reasonable wage in south Sudan and use good way to bring the cost of imported goods closer to what the goods would have cost if produced here under those conditions.
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