DUBAI: Zain Sudan, the country’s leading telecoms operator by subscribers, has raised employee wages by about 15 per cent to mitigate rampant inflation in the country, the firm’s chief executive told Reuters on Monday.

Sudan’s annual inflation was 46.4 per cent in August.

Inflation has surged following South Sudan’s succession in 2011, which deprived Khartoum of three-quarters of its oil output and main source of foreign currency, which it needs to support its currency and pay for food and other imports.

Zain Sudan has invested heavily in training and development and increased employees’ annual wages by an average of 15 per cent, Elfatih Erwa, the company’s chief executive, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai.

This is partly to allow for the rising cost of living in Sudan, but also to deter operators from abroad poaching its staff, he said.

Zain Sudan, part of Kuwait’s Zain, competes with rival mobile operators Sudani, a unit of state-owned Sudatel which offers fixed line calls, and South Africa’s MTN, plus a second fixed-line operator Canar.

Erwa said Zain Sudan had not been able to raise its prices to keep pace with inflation.

“The only thing we did lately was introduce new data packages, to replace flat rate pricing,” said Erwa.

Zain Sudan’s half-year net profit fell 19 per cent to $59.5 million, although revenue in local currency terms rose 11 per cent to 1.99 billion Sudanese pounds ($350 million). Last November, Sudan devalued the pound by 23 per cent, the second such move in a little over a year.

“We have been buying local assets to keep the money of shareholders intact because the value of these assets will rise along with inflation,” said Erwa, declining to give more details.

Data, excluding text messaging, accounts for 11 per cent of Zain Sudan’s revenue. Erwa said this would rise to 15 per cent in 2015. About 40 per cent of his firm’s customers use their phones for data.

Zain Sudan claims a 41 per cent share of Sudan’s mobile subscribers and 60 per cent of total sector revenue.

Erwa told the conference that Zain Sudan was waiting for government permission to launch a high-speed long-term evolution (LTE) network and that it could launch LTE services within 3-4 months of receiving this approval.