Moses Makur, Central Bank Governor speaking to media in Juba - Photo: Lou Nelson/Eye Radio - 11th Jan. 2022.

The Bank of South Sudan has disclosed the auctioning of another 8 million US dollars to forex and commercial banks in a bid to stabilize the local currency.

Central Bank Governor Moses Makur revealed that 5 million dollars will be auctioned to commercial banks and 3 million dollars to forex exchange bureaus.

Makur says the government is determined to continue auctioning hard currency in the market until the exchange goes back to normal.

“The bank has decided as from next week to auction 8 million dollars, 5 million to commercial banks and 3 million to forex bureau. We will watch the trend of the rate. If it persists and doesn’t go down, we will increase after two weeks to maybe 13 million,” Makur said.

The measures come amidst a spontaneous depreciation of South Sudanese pounds against the US dollars.

The inflation, blamed on a number of factors, has also resulted in rising commodity prices in the markets.

“We are ready even to increase it further to 20 million dollars a week to make sure that the dollar must come down,” he told the media on Friday.

According to a statement of the Bank, the depreciation of pounds is caused by the ongoing payment of civil servant’s arrears, high demand of forex to meet high cost of import, suspension of loans by IMF and World Bank as well as speculations by market dealers.

“And the speculators, we warn them that your basis for expecting rise in dollars must not be concrete as you think because we are now reserved to deal with this situation until it goes back to where we want it, and that is 400 SSP per a dollar,” said Makur.

The bank also attributed other factors such as ‘too many holidays since December last year to May this year, to be have affected the scheduled auctions to offset parallel markets.’