JUBA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan is working on a five-year national development strategy that seeks to provide guidance on strategic actions to achieve peace, economic recovery and enforce development financing, a government official said on Thursday.
Finance and Economic Planning Minister Stephen Dheiu Dau said the development strategy to be launched in December is part of the government's economic reform and development financing agenda aimed at stabilizing the country.
"We shall design a financing mechanism that will tap new opportunities while expanding fiscal space for development," Dheiu told a meeting of donors and heads of diplomatic missions in Juba.
The minister said under the new plan, the government would be required to double its national development expenditure from the current 20 percent, increase revenue collection, promote private sector development and reopen the defunct government-donor forum to enhance cooperation between private, public and development partners.
Dau called on donors to support the initiative, saying the new plan is for the benefit of all sectors in South Sudan through giving guidance on public financial management, investment, tax collection, among others.
Aggrey Tisa, Presidential Advisor on Economic Affairs hailed the development strategy as an important project that would spur South Sudan into development and stability if well implemented.
"Without a deliberately designed strategy, you operate like in a vacuum, so the strategy itself is a way of showing discipline in the prioritization of government programs," Tisa said.
War-torn South Sudan depends on oil export for 98 percent of its revenue, but production reduced significantly due to the civil war that erupted in December 2013, causing most oilfields in the country's oil-rich northern region to shut down.
The East African nation is currently struggling with hyper inflation amid shortage of foreign reserves to support its import-dependent economy.
Donors and Ambassadors who attended the meeting welcomed the proposed national development strategy and further hailed the economic reform policies to be undertaken in the 2017-2018 fiscal budgets as key steps towards easing the current economic crisis.
But they warned that funding to the East African nation has been constrained by the ongoing civil war and lack of strict public financial management mechanism to combat corruption.
