Sudan appoints new central bank governor

CAIRO (Reuters) - Sudan appointed a prominent banker to head its central bank on Sunday, state news agency SUNA said, in the latest sign of an overhaul of senior posts in the Arab-African state hit by a shortage of hard currency.

Sudan's economy has been in turmoil since South Sudan seceded in 2011, taking with it about three-quarters of the country's oil production. Oil is the main source of government revenues and dollars, needed for food and other imports.

"President Omar Hassan al-Bashir issued a decree to appoint Abdel Rahman Hassan, head of (Khartoum's state-run) Omdurman National Bank since 2006, as new central bank governor," SUNA said in a statement.

The central bank devalued the Sudanese pound by 22.6 percent against the dollar in November, the second such move in just over a year.

The scarcity of dollars had become so bad that the central bank had started using up the general reserves of commercial banks, which are meant to be kept as deposits with the central bank, a financial source has told Reuters.

Hassan is a board member of Sudan's Bank Deposit Security Fund (BDSF) and a representative of the union of Sudanese banks.

In September the government lifted most fuel subsidies to help overcome a budget crisis. The move doubled pump prices overnight and triggered violent protests in which dozens of people were killed and more than 700 people arrested.

In a government shake-up earlier this month, Bashir named Lieutenant General Bakri Hassan Saleh - a close ally who helped him stage his 1989 coup and crush many rebellions - as first vice president, replacing veteran Islamist Ali Osman Taha.

Analysts said the change showed Bashir's desire to turn to more trusted allies to his power base in the military.

The finance, oil and interior ministers were also changed in the reshuffle, along with other ministers and top officials.

(Reporting by Omar Fahmy, Asma Alsharif and Shadia Nasralla in Cairo and Khaled Abdel Aziz in Khartoum, writing by Yasmine Saleh)