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South Sudan cancels independence celebrations due to economic crunch

Xinhua, July 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

South Sudan has canceled this year's independence celebrations, due to the economic crunch resulting from more than two years of civil conflict that affected its oil sector.

The Minister of Information, Michael Makuei told Xinhua on Thursday that they won't be celebrating July 9, Independence Day due to economic hardship with inflation at nearly 300 percent after the South Sudan Pound depreciated by 90 percent in the aftermath of devaluation in 2015.

"This year we shall not be celebrating independence day. The president will this time only issue a statement," Makuei said in Juba.

He explained that the money meant for this year's independence celebration will instead be diverted for payment of salaries of some of the striking civil servants like university lecturers, judges and teachers.

"Independence Day celebrations every year take a lot of money. We will instead use the money to sort out salaries of civil servants," he revealed.

The oil production in the country's northern oil fields in Upper Nile and Unity state plummeted from 350,000 barrels a day to less than 160,000 bpd, and this has been exacerbated by the global drop in oil prices.

The country relies on oil to finance 98 percent of its fiscal budget. South Sudan won independence in July 9, 2011 from Sudan after more than two decades of war that ended in a bitter divorce.

The country again plunged into conflict in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup, which the latter denied leading to a cycle of retaliatory killings.

President Kiir and former rebel leader and now first Vice President Machar signed a peace deal in August that paved way for the formation of the transitional unity government to end more than two year's of civil conflict.

But analysts say the shaky peace deal is threatened by the bickering between the two parties on the creation of the controversial 28 states, cantonment areas, and militias on the periphery who felt left out of the peace deal. Endit