Factbox: South Sudan oil dispute lingers on

(Reuters) - South Sudan President Salva Kiir said this month he wants to end a row with Sudan over oil transit payments but has rejected a proposal requiring Juba to pay billions of dollars and keep exporting crude through the neighboring country.

Juba shut down its oil output of 350,000 barrels per day to end the seizures by Sudan. The two neighbors have been locked in a row over disentangling their oil industries after the South split from Sudan and became independent in July 2011, following decades of civil war that ended with a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005.

Here is a look at South Sudan:

ECONOMY:

-- South Sudan's president this week appointed a fifteen-member committee to decide on the austerity measures needed to keep the government functioning after the loss of oil revenues.

-- Oil accounted for about 98 percent of the south's total revenue in 2010. South Sudan took about three-quarters of the unified country's 500,000 barrels per day oil output when it seceded. But the only pipelines to take the crude to market all pass through Sudan.

-- The government of South Sudan has announced plans to build additional refining capacity and has discussed as a 2,200-mile pipeline from its territory to Kenya's port in Lamu.

-- Government revenues in South Sudan were $1.8 billion as stated in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning's budget for 2011.

-- According to the government's own website, 51 percent of the population live below the national poverty line.

DOING BUSINESS IN SOUTH SUDAN:

-- Juba came 159th out of the 183 economies ranked by the ease of doing business in the World Bank's Doing Business report. On trading across borders, Juba came in 181st. Using the port of Mombasa in Kenya, an entrepreneur must fill 11 documents, wait 60 days and spend $9,420 to import a container. Exporting a container takes nine documents, 52 days and $5,025.

COUNTRY DETAILS:

POPULATION: 8.26 million

Note: The 2009 census showed a total Sudanese population of 39.15 million, with 30.89 million living in the north and 8.26 million in the south. The south contested the census and said it has undercounted the southerners. Hundreds of thousands of expatriate southerners have moved back home since the census.

AREA: 640,000 sq km. (About one third of the landmass of the united Sudan)

RELIGION: Mostly Christian and traditional beliefs

DEVELOPMENT:

-- Throughout the first half of 2011 large numbers of South Sudanese (over 300,000) returned home. At the same time, more than 100,000 people were displaced due to border clashes with the North, as was the case in Abyei. Many of the returnees and displaced people arrive in areas with very limited basic social services, putting further strain on the resources.

-- Malnutrition rates are persistently above the emergency threshold and are as high as 21 per cent in children under five in certain areas. Eight percent eight per cent suffering from severe malnutrition.

-- Around 34 percent of the population has access to safe drinking water, and 15.4 percent has access to improved sanitation.

-- Maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world, at 2,054 per 100,000 live births.

-- On average, 16 women of reproductive age die unnecessarily each day, due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth and 18 per cent of the population suffers from chronic hunger.

Sources Reuters/http://ssnbs.org/World Bank/UNICEF/Doing Business in Juba/

(Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Andrew Heavens)