Speaker Jemma Nunu Kumba hands passed budget to President Salva Kiir. | 7th October 2022. | Photo: Office of President/Facebook.)

New Minister of Finance and Planning Eng. Awow Daniel Chuang said Tuesday the country has not been able to raise enough resources despite the crude oil export.

Minister Chuang said the annual budget only covers small portion of the government expenditure, adding that the country has a huge deficit without stating the details.

The finance minister also argues that the challenges facing the financial docket should not be associated with individuals, but rather with the dire shortages of revenue.

“We have not been able to raise enough resources to run the government, there has only been deficit,” he said in a speech during his reception ceremony at the Ministry of Finance and planning in Juba on Tuesday.

Solacing his predecessor, the finance minister said: “I know the challenges that you were going through. It is not a fault of a person; it just happens that we have shortages of resources.”

“The resources that are developed in South Sudan is oil, and even if the oil is running, we still have a deficit, the deficit is so huge. When we make our budget, we just put it, but it doesn’t cover anything at all.”

“The NRA when they started to do their work, they do it very well, but they also need time, they need to be empowered for them to do their work, and for the institution to function efficiently.”

Finance minister Chuang said the Central Bank is also having its share of the blames. He asserted that the economic turbulence facing the country is not the making of one person, but the country’s misfortune.

“The central bank equally is having difficulties, and these are not their problems, these are the problems of the country so we must understand this.”

Chuang, a former petroleum minister, takes over from Dr. Barnaba Chol amid economic hardships resulting from dwindling oil export via the crisis-hit Sudan and the Red Sea waters.