Sudan Promises to Clear Hurdles Facing Chinese Investments

Sudanese President and Chairman of the National Congress Party Omar al-Bashir (1st R) meets with Li Yuanchao (1st L), a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Sudan Promises to Clear Hurdles Facing Chinese Investments

Sudan Tribune

KHARTOUM – The Sudanese investment minister Mustafa Osman Ismail has pledged to resolve all problems facing Chinese investments in the country particularly regarding the repatriation of profits abroad.

Foreign investment companies operating in Sudan are suffering from the shortage in hard currency and continue to complain about losing millions of dollars when buying it from the black market.

Last June, the Sudanese branch of the Mobile Telecommunications Co (Zain) said that it lost more than $60 million due to unfavorable exchange rate of the Sudanese pound relative to other major currencies.

The Sudanese pound is now trading at 7.5 to the dollar on the black market which sharply contrasts the official exchange rate of 4.4.
Ismail said in press statements on Wednesday upon his return from Beijing where he attended the Shi Min International Fair, that transit fees collected by his government exporting from South Sudan’s oil would solve the problem of the hard currency needed by foreign companies.

Khartoum expects to earn $500 million in revenue annually from transit fees of South Sudanese crude.

Ismail said that the exhibition he attended offered a good opportunity for displaying the Sudanese products adding that Sudan could export its products including cotton and peanuts to China.

China has been Sudan’s largest foreign investor particularly in oil and telecommunications after western firms shunned the East African nation due to conflicts and sanctions.

China’s exports and imports to and from Sudan, which totaled $11.5 billion in 2011, amounted to just $3.3 billion in the January-November period of 2012, Reuters quoted official Chinese data.

The drop in oil trade accounted for much of that decline. But even while the oil industry has been shut down trade has continued to fall. In the first five months of this year, Chinese exports to Sudan fell 8 percent from a year earlier to $1.7 billion, the data shows.