UN supports South Sudan’s efforts to stimulate trade

South Sudan said on Tuesday it will use support from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to build its institutional capacity to stimulate trade with its neighbors and the world.

Agak Achuil Lual, undersecretary Ministry of Trade and East African Affairs, said the Tier 1 credit facility under the Enhanced Integration Framework supported by UNDP will help them enhance institutional capacity of the ministry of trade and related institutions to better coordinate and integrate trade issues into the country’s development agenda.

“The (trade) ministry aims to create enabling environment for mainstreaming trade into the national agenda, build capacity of the staff of the ministry and develop laws of our trade policy,” Lual said in Juba.

“Rwanda and Uganda have already started implementing Tier 2 and these countries are also Least Developed Countries (LDCs) like South Sudan.”

In October 2014, the Diagnostic Trade Integration Study (DTIS) for South Sudan was validated. The DTIS is the cornerstone to the EIF program as it forms the basis for eligibility to the program.

The DTIS and it’s Action Matrix is an analytical report or document that LDCs use to develop concrete national Aid for Trade (AfT) implementation plans (Tier I).

Tier I Project will be implemented over three years and support greater in-country capacity and ownership with the objectives of building the human resource capacity of the national implementation arrangements, preparing or updating the DTIS and facilitating and supporting mainstreaming trade actions.

UNDP handed over assortment to the ministry of trade that included computers, vehicles, cameras and furniture to enable capacity building of staff as South Sudan seeks to build its competitive advantage in both regional and global trade.

Kamil Kayode Kamaluddeen, country director of UNDP South Sudan, said the inauguration of the National Implementation Unit office is in line with the progressive vision of South Sudan to stimulate the economy and leverage opportunities through local, regional and international trade for delivering goods and development.

“This important project we are launching today is supported by the EIF, a multi-lateral facility dedicated to assisting least developed countries to use trade as an engine of growth, social development and poverty eradication,” he said.

“Through this project the government of South Sudan will receive adequate technical assistance, capacity building including issues related to trade negotiation, World Trade Accession and engagement with the East African Community (EAC),” he added.

South Sudan in 2016 joined the regional trade body EAC that also includes Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.

The country depends 98 percent on oil to finance its fiscal budget and it’s currently reviving oil production in it’s northern oil fields that were affected during the more than five years of conflict. Enditem