World Bank projects South Sudan economy to shrink in 2022

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JUBA, June 15 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank on Wednesday projected South Sudan's economy to shrink from 0.8 percent to 2.8 percent in the 2022/23 fiscal year.

Joseph Mawejje, the economist of Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment in the World Bank South Sudan, said the growth will be negatively affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, lower oil production and flooding.

Mawejje, however, said the economic growth will depend on what decisions the authorities will make during the year in terms of investments and also external factors will play a role.

"The recovery is going to be much weaker than initially anticipated as you all know. In the last fiscal year there was a contraction of about 5.1 percent and now with oil production falling even further our projection is that the economy is going to shrink further," he told journalists in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Mawejje revealed that South Sudan's economy was hit hard by the conflict in the country and it started to rebound and again was hit hard by shocks including the flooding which affected both the oil and agriculture sectors.

South Sudan's economy is struggling to recover from high inflation caused largely by years of conflicts since December 2013. The country depends on oil revenues to finance 95 percent of its fiscal budget.