AS THE MINIBUS CRUISES on one of Juba’s main roads, the conductor looks on in irritation as the passenger protests the fare. “Hey! I gave you 500SSP (about $1). Why are you giving me 100SSP (balance)? Have you forgotten that we boarded from the Ministries Complex at Kololo?” Mary Adut, in the company of a younger sibling, loudly rains questions at the conductor as she hops off the van. The middle-aged dirver, probably in his early fifties, intervenes, beckoning Adut who quickly walks to the driver’s door expecting to get 200SSP balance. “What is your name, my daughter?” the driver asks in his elderly voice, catching Adut off guard. She mumbles her full name, Mary Adut.
Driver:
“No offense. Times have changed. The diesel we used to buy at 430SSP six months ago is now 800SSP (about $1.6 a liter) at some filling stations. How can we now refill if we maintain the fee at 100SSP? We are actually at a double loss because we fuel expensively and yet most people nowadays prefer walking to using a taxi due to the high cost of living.”
Adut: “Malesi ya baba (Sorry daddy)”
Adut quietly walks off, her younger sibling tailing her, as the driver’s point sinks in.
CONSUMERS ARE TAKING the hit as a general economic malaise hits the country – one that will this week be backed up by World Bank data. The South Sudanese economy is forecast to shrink, the World Bank is expected to detail this week, a curious development as the economy bucks a trend of growth for oil based economies, reflecting the challenges for an oil economy that doesn’t refine any oil. “Although the price of oil, the country’s only export has gone up, the cost of living has skyrocketed as a result of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine,” the Bank`s country manager Firas Raad said Friday.
The fall by 2 percent reflects the role that the international aid flows have hitherto played in propping up South Sudan’s economy by injecting money into nonprofits and the dangers that now lurk as focus shifts to Ukraine. According to Firas, the forecast was different at the start of the year before external factors bucked that trend. Raad said this during a press briefing to announce $129 million to support the women and youth entrepreneurs in 15 counties in South Sudan. South Sudan has 79 counties. The support to the youth entrepreneurs is unrelated to the worsening economic situation that has hit most families, such as Adut’s.
THE DOWNTURN HAS hit big retailers. Tasfem Teke, an Eritrean owner of a corner store along the Juba-Mobil roundabout road told timeoftheworld.com that almost all retail prices have gone up because the cost has gone up, the least by 25% for goods like cigarettes. “Five Kilograms of flour used to be 2700SSP ($70 then) at the start of the year, it now goes for 3800SSP ($70), a liter of cooking oil used to be 400SSP, but now we sell it for 600SSP, and the list is endless simply because the pound has depreciated against the dollar leading to the high cost of importation”, says Tasfem Teke.
Tasfem looks up every time he mentions the difference in grocery price as if expecting a heavenly intervention.
“There is no way out. Prices are up, and people are not buying; I am even contemplating closing if the situation persists though I keep hoping for God to intervene”, he says.
THE IMPACT IS felt even among the street vendors. Opposite the National Blood bank sits a young woman on the fence of St Mary’s University College, Juba. Her hair slightly protrude from the tight blue-colored head scarf, which has a yellowish religious cross emblazoned on it, her multi-coloured dress neatly covers her stretched legs, inches from her basket full of ripe bananas, and her blue sandals act as a sitting mat as Rejoice Justin, 25, quietly breastfeeds her one-and-a-half-year-old child with her eyes glued to the basket of her goods. Rejoice who dropped out in the second year of high school and a mother of two hawks bananas around Mobil roundabout and the adjacent road to Usratuna Primary School to make ends meet. “I buy the bananas from Gumbo more expensively than in the past. I used to buy at 1000SSP (about $2.5) and still make a profit to survive. Unlike these days, you have to buy for at least 5000SSP to make some profit, yet the transport cost has gone up. My regular customers are even complaining that they can no longer afford the luxury of fruits”, Rejoice shyly explains before adding that last week, she made a loss of 3000SSP because her bananas went bad due to long storage.
When asked what kind of help she would need in her business, she responds by asking, from whom? “The only person I ask for help is God – nobody else because nothing good ever comes from the government and munazamat (NGO’s),” she says as she holds the small rosary on her son’s neck, re-affirming her faith.
LAST THURSDAY, ROBERT Pitia Francis, the chairperson of Central Equatoria State Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, cited COVID-19 pandemic, high taxation imposed on traders by different state agencies, and volatility in the global oil market and depreciation of the national currency as factors leading to the price increases. “Once people have goods in the stores, they start increasing prices and because there is COVID-19, there is no movement,” Pitia said at a briefing in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, adding that harmonization of tax policy is crucial for taming inflation.
However, most of the factors are simply exacerbating a new problem: the increase in fuel prices on the back of rising prices of imported fuel and all transport related items. Adut’s minibus driver who l later identifies himself to timesoftheworld.com as Abdallah Sebit, a retired soldier from the pre-independence Sudan Armed Forces, says he hardly makes any profits because of the increase in pump prices.
“I live in Munuki with my wife and four grown-up kids,” Sebit says. “These days, I hardly go home with money as my car is old and I live in prayers. I have to inject all money into the spares, which have all gone up”
