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Sudan Tribune

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South Sudan asks Ethiopia’s Zenawi to address fiscal crisis

March 31, 2009 (ADDIS ABABA) — The Presidential Affairs Minister of southern Sudan government, Luka Biong Deng, asked Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to raise the issue of South Sudan’s fiscal crisis at the G-20 Summit in London on Thursday.

The Group of Twenty (G-20) is a gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors of the countries with some of the world’s largest economies. Ethiopia is not a member of the group but Meles is slated to take part to represent the African continent.

He received on Tuesday at his office Minister Luka Biong Deng, who delivered a message from the President of Southern Sudan government Salva Kiir Mayardit. Kiir’s message asked that Meles report on the fiscal crisis facing Southern Sudan at the G-20 Summit, according to the official Ethiopia News Agency (ENA).

The decline in world oil prices has reduced the revenue of the Government of Southern Sudan, which was founded in 2005. Last Friday the Governor of the Bank of Southern Sudan, Elijah Malok Aleng, and representatives of the World Bank and Joint Donor Team joined a cabinet session to discuss the negative impact of the global financial crisis on the semi-autonomous region’s 2009 budget.

After the cabinet session, Malok, custodian of GOSS money, indicated that the bank is almost empty and partly blamed the situation on financial irregularities by senior government officials.

Luka Biong, who had presented a memo on the crisis at the GOSS cabinet meeting, told Meles that the current global economic and financial crisis has been impeding the peace process in South Sudan, said to ENA a senior government official who attended the discussion.

Ethiopian official news added that the Sudanese minister commended Meles for his “relentless efforts geared toward the success of the peace process in South Sudan.”

“Meles reaffirmed to the minister that he will reiterate the existing crisis in South Sudan to participants of the summit, if the schedule of the summit permits to do so,” reported the official source.

(ST)

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