Tunis: Sudan wants to sell international Islamic bonds, or sukuk, worth nearly $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) this year to help finance the budget, its finance minister said on Thursday.
Sudan has been largely cut off from international financing in the past decades due to US sanctions which were lifted in October.
Since then, officials have been trying to lure investors to its economy, which has been struggling since the south seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of the country’s oil output, its main source of foreign currency and government income.
“The Sudanese government will issue a sukuk [worth] nearly $1 billion for the first time this year,” Finance Minister Mohammad Othman Rukabi said on the sidelines of a conference in Tunis.
“It will be late this year to finance the 2018 budget,” he said, without giving details. “In Sudan we started already with local sukuk but it will be the first time that will issue sukuk in the international market.” In December, parliament passed its 2018 budget and projected a budget deficit of 2.4 per cent of GDP.
The budget projects economic growth of 4 per cent in 2018, the cabinet said after approving the bill. The IMF expects growth for 2017 to come in at 3.25 per cent.
The government is targeting a sharp fall in inflation, to reach 19.5 per cent by the end of 2018 from 34.1 per cent at the of end of 2017, a cabinet spokesman told reporters late on Tuesday. Inflation rose to record highs this year on the back of a weakening currency.
The IMF urged Sudan to let the pound float freely and to cut energy and wheat subsidies to boost growth and investment. It said Khartoum had a chance to improve the economy after the United States ended 20 years of sanctions.
The government has implemented some reforms, doubling the price of bread from January, which sparked two weeks of protests. The pounds has not been floated though.
