South Sudan’s business people and investors are struggling to keep up a steady flow of goods and services despite shortage of hard currency.
Food and non food prices have skyrocketed due to lack of dollars to pay for the imports.Sebastian Sebit, Jit’s administrative manager, told CRN that lack of hard currency has made it almost impossible for the company to buy and ship in the goods in time from Kenya.
He said the shortage of dollars is responsible for a five percent increase in prices.
Mr Sebit added that his company has a reserve of Kenyan Shillings to be able to import stuff.
Most money exchangers in Juba have run out of dollars. The director of one of the bureaus said off record that the Central Bank of South Sudan has not given them dollars in the past couple of weeks.
Traders are forced to buy the dollar on the black market at 4.5 or five pounds, while the official rate is 3.16 pounds.
Mogga Peter Lemi, human resource manager at Juba Raha hotel, said the scarcity of dollars has made imports very expensive, cutting on expected profit.
Mr Lemi blamed the government for not controlling the pound’s value.
He said traders in currency and black marketers fix the rate of the dollar as they like and commercial banks funnel hard currency to the streets.
Most basic commodities like sugar, dura, salt, flour and maize now cost almost twice. One kilo of sugar went from 3.5 pounds to seven or eight.
Pharmacies and medical stores have also increased their prices.
In towns far from Juba most basic goods went up by almost 50 percent.