KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan hopes to see its economy grow 6.4 percent in 2016, up from 5.3 percent in 2015, as the price of oil imports falls, the government said in a budget proposal it approved on Tuesday.
The draft budget is set to be discussed by parliament on Wednesday, before a final vote. The 2015 budget had a projected growth rate of 3.6 percent but the decline in oil prices meant the government could surpass that.
"The new budget encourages local production of wheat, sugar, and medicine in Sudan and does not include any lifting of subsidies right now," said government spokesman Omar Saleh.
Sudan's economy was hit hard in 2011 when the south seceded, taking with it three-quarters of the country's oil, estimated at 5 billion barrels of proven reserves by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The Sudanese pound fell as the country lost a key source of foreign exchange, used to fund purchases of food, and inflation shot up.
In 2013, the government cut fuel subsidies in an effort to curb its spending. That pushed the inflation rate up to nearly 50 percent and prompted major protests against the government.
But as an importer of oil, Sudan is now benefiting from a slump of more than 40 percent in global oil prices since June 2014.
Inflation has slowed to 17.9 percent in 2015, Saleh said, and the government targets an inflation rate of 13 percent and an unemployment rate of 18 percent in 2016.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Larry King)
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