South Sudan urges restricting cash outflows amid hyper inflation

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir on Tuesday blamed the unrestricted cash outflows for exacerbating the hyper inflation in the war-torn nation.

"Our people (South Sudanese) took their money out of the country, and the money taken out of the country does not benefit us. Most of the South Sudanese have decided to reside outside the country, they just come here to get some U.S. dollars and they go," Kiir said in Juba.

He also urged his officials to devise tight measures aimed at restricting cash-out flows in the oil-rich country whose major foreign exchange earner remains oil export.

"We cannot force people to remain in South Sudan when we are not sure about the security," Kiir said.

South Sudan depends on oil to finance 98 percent of its fiscal budget, but the more than three years of domestic conflict and global fall in oil prices have caused production in its northern oil fields to decline from over 350,000 barrels a day to below 130,000 since outbreak of conflict in December.

"When we became independent, we had a very strong economy and when we introduced our own money it was competitive in the market and now it is not there," he said.

President Kiir recently sacked long-serving central bank chief Kornelio Koryom, replacing him with Othom Rago Ajak, a career banker, amid runaway inflation peaking at 835.7 percent since October.

The South Sudanese Pound (SSP) is exchanging in the black market with the U.S. dollar at as high as 95 in January, up from 34 since April 2016. Endit