A government committee in Sudan expected that the measures taken to reduce the spread of the Coronavirus by reducing public revenues in the state budget by forty percent, while the Ministry of Finance announced the start of preparing a new budget to meet the economic consequences of the epidemic.
In this context, Ali Khalifa Askouri, the Director of Strategic Commodities Department at the Ministry of Finance said that the new budget will be approved next week.
The public budget in Sudan faces a decrease in revenues and economic contraction, high rates of inflation and unemployment, and a deterioration in the value of the national currency (the pound). The country's economic difficulties were compounded by precautionary measures to counter the spread of the Corona pandemic, the declaration of a health emergency, curfews and the closure of land crossings with neighboring countries.
The Local Resource Mobilization Committee made up of the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change and the government proposed alternatives to cover the expected budget deficit. The committee proposed eight items to bridge the revenue gap, which includes ending tax exemptions other than agreements, which represent 47 percent of tax revenue, and 53 percent for customs exemptions, as well as increasing the telecommunications tax to 60 percent instead of the current tariff set at 7 Percent, and the issuance of government investment certificates that use their savings to purchase the proceeds of the gold exporter to improve the foreign currency reserves of the Bank of Sudan.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Edited)
