EVEN in the posher restaurants in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the world’s newest country, the menus are printed on cheap paper. It is not worth having more expensive ones when they have to be updated every few weeks. Thanks to an inflation rate that touched more than 50% a month at one point last year (the conventional definition of hyperinflation, though it has since eased off a bit), even a modest meal costs a brick-sized bundle of currency. Over the past year, the value of the South Sudanese pound has collapsed. It used to take 30 to buy a dollar; now it takes 120. The biggest banknote, 100 SSP, is now the world’s least valuable highest-denomination national note.
The cause of this nasty bout of inflation is twofold: money-printing and economic collapse. South Sudan’s economy is among the least diversified in the world. In 2014 oil provided 99.8% of export revenues. At independence in 2011, when production was high and oil fetched over $100 a barrel, petrodollars flowed freely and fuelled colossal political patronage. But a shutdown in 2012 followed by civil war, which broke out in 2013, has slashed output. South Sudan now produces...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2mNWAmP
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