SOUTH SUDAN GOVERNMENT STRUGGLES TO CONSTRUCT A

UNCLAS KHARTOUM 001649 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR AF/SPG AND EEB/IFD DEPARTMENT PASS TREASURY FOR OIA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON EFIN EAID PREL PGOV SU SUBJECT: SOUTH SUDAN GOVERNMENT STRUGGLES TO CONSTRUCT A FISCAL FOUNDATION REF: A. KHARTOUM 1403 ¶B. KHARTOUM 1568 -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (SBU) Budgetary planning by the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) is hampered by excessive personnel costs and dependence on unreliable revenue sources. The GoSS is working to correct these deficiencies, but faces an uphill struggle given a lack of institutional capacity and likely resistance to needed, but potentially painful, reforms. End Summary. -------------- GoSS Handicapped by Inadequate Capacity -------------- ¶2. (SBU) During a recent visit to Juba, Econoff discussed the fiscal challenges facing the autonomous Government of South Sudan with Moses Mabior, Coordinator of Foreign Assistance in the GoSS Ministry of Finance and Planning. The Finance Ministry currently is in the process of drafting the 2008 GoSS budget. Mabior admitted that a lack of institutional capacity significantly handicaps the GoSS generally, including his Ministry's planning capacity. He noted that the GoSS started from scratch in 2005, and thus lacks any significant historical base on which to make budgetary plans. It -- along with the rest of the government -- also suffers from a critical lack of qualified personnel. -------------- Expenditures ) Salaries Dominate -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Mabior noted that spending on current consumption ) especially salaries * dominates GoSS expenditures and has crowded out capital investment, with security-force expenditures accounting for 70 percent of GoSS personnel costs. The GoSS has felt obligated to pursue a policy of &social employment8, intended to provide incomes for SPLA veterans of the civil war, war widows, and others considered by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) to be entitled to GoSS support. The result is a bloated GoSS workforce, with a relatively small proportion of GoSS staff doing substantive work. Government payrolls also are plagued by significant numbers of "ghost" workers who draw salaries, but are not present for work. ¶4. (SBU) To remedy this situation, Mabior said the GoSS plans a payroll-cleanup program that will purge the rolls of ghost workers and introduce new payroll procedures to prevent abuses. Additionally, the Ministry of Labor, Public Services and Human Resources Development will start issuing ID cards to civil service employees in November. The GoSS also plans to transfer excess security personnel and non-substantive civilian employees to programs that will train them either for productive work in the government or in the private sector. -------------- Revenues ) Oil Dependence -------------- ¶5. (U) Mabior said that the GoSS currently depends on volatile oil revenues for over 90 percent of its income. Under the wealth-sharing provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Sudan,s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the opposition SPLM, oil revenues collected in the area governed by the SPLM are divided equally between the GoSS and the Government of National Unity (GNU) in Khartoum. The price of Sudan,s oil exports can fluctuate widely. For example, the price of a barrel of Sudanese oil dropped to only US$49 in February (admittedly an exceptionally low price, one month price) and rose to US$77 in August. Export volumes also have varied; although they gradually have increased over the course of 2007 as problems in shipping Dar-blend crude have been overcome. The unpredictability of these revenues further complicates budget planning. ¶6. (SBU) Mabior indicated that the GoSS doubts that it is receiving all of the oil revenues to which it is entitled under the CPA (ref b). Although the statistics published by Sudan,s Ministry of Finance indicate that the South receives half of the revenues earned from oil produced in the South, the GoSS questions the transparency of this arrangement on two grounds. First, according to Mabior, the GoSS is not privy to the specifics of contracts that the GNU negotiated with foreign oil companies to develop the fields before the CPA. The GoSS suspects that, under pressure to raise funds to pay for the war quickly, the GNU signed sweetheart deals with its foreign partners and the GoSS now is suffering the consequences. Second, until the January 1956 North-South border finally is demarcated, it is impossible to know which oil fields actually lie in the South. The GoSS suspects that it is not receiving all of the oil revenues to which it should be entitled. -------------- Search for a Stable Revenue Base -------------- ¶7. (SBU) To correct these weaknesses, the GoSS is slowly seeking to develop other, more stable, sources of revenue. Under the CPA, some taxes collected in the South by the GNU (e.g., VAT, customs duties, corporate income tax) are to be shared equally between the GNU and the GoSS, in the same way as oil revenues. Mabior said that in July, the GNU and the GoSS agreed to establish a joint committee to monitor tax revenues, paralleling the existing committee that monitors oil revenues. According to Mabior, a staff has begun compiling data, but committee members have yet to be named and tax revenues have yet to begin flowing to the GoSS. When the committee does begin operation, revenues collected in the South will be divided retroactively, back to July 2007. (Comment: Juba has been equally delinquent in sharing revenues with Khartoum. End comment.) ¶8. (SBU) Simultaneously, the GoSS Finance Ministry is beginning to establish a tax-policy framework for the collection of revenues in the South. The Ministry is in the final stages of preparing two pieces of key legislation: 1.) Public Financial Management Act, and 2.) Revenue Act. The Ministry hopes that both will be enacted by the end of this year. (Note: This goal is likely illusory, given the slow pace at which the South Sudan Legislative Assembly has been dealing with its legislative agenda so far. End note.) -------------- Critical Donor Support -------------- ¶9. (U) Mabior praised donor assistance to Southern Sudan, including a U.S. Treasury advisor at the Ministry. In briefing the quarterly donors group meeting in Juba in late September, new GoSS Finance Minister Kuol Athian Mawien said that his government will be looking to the donors for significant Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration assistance at the next Sudan Consortium meeting to finance government payroll-cleanup plans. Mabior said that the next Sudan Consortium has tentatively been set for late January. However, the current political conflict between the NCP and the SPLM has thrown planning into uncertainty. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶10. (SBU) The fiscal challenges facing the Government of South Sudan mirror closely those of the GNU in Khartoum, as outlined recently by the IMF (ref a). However, the South probably faces them to an even greater degree: overdependence on volatile oil revenues, over-expenditure on consumption (especially salaries) and a lack of institutional capacity to compensate for or correct these weaknesses. The GoSS is at least aware of and committed to tackling these issues. However, the overall thinness of technical expertise in the civil service and the political resistance that is likely to face reforms such payroll-clean-up, will pose obstacles to implementation that will be difficult to overcome. POWERS