Hamdouk: Sudan does not have reserves to protect the pound
Side of the capital, Khartoum.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdock said that his country does not have foreign exchange reserves to protect the value of the pound and that there is a "structural defect".
Hamdouk said that the price of the dollar in cash transactions today amounted to 95 pounds.
The country's ruling sovereignty council and cabinet approved the 2020 budget in December, the first since President Omar al-Bashir was ousted, who in recent years has been ruled by severe economic problems.
The Ministry of Finance said in a budget statement 2020 that the Central Bank of Sudan prints pounds equivalent to $ 200 million a month to buy and export gold to finance subsidized commodities, mainly fuel and wheat, which led to "a state of unbridled inflation with a near-constant decline in the exchange rate in the parallel market."
Hamdouk said in a television interview that Sudan has strategic reserves of basic commodities for more than a month.
He also said that his government was working on a new law for the Bank of Sudan, adding that the central bank should follow the cabinet and not the sovereignty council.
He added, "The Bank of Sudan is one of the legacies of the previous regime and has turned into a commercial bank that speculates and trades in gold ... We are working on developing a new law for the Bank of Sudan."
Sudan's economy was hit hard when the south of the country split in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of its oil production, a vital source of foreign currency.