South Sudan president fires central bank governor over high consumer prices
Juba — South Sudanese President Salva Kiir fired the central bank’s governor after he failed to rein in consumer prices that almost tripled last year, the country’s presidency said. Kiir is struggling to stabilise an economy that has contracted for the past three years after a civil war broke out in 2013 and as slumping oil prices crimped the government’s main source of revenue. Inflation is forecast to more than double this year and next, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On Thursday, the president appointed Dier Tong Ngor, a former deputy governor at the bank, to replace Othom Rago Ajak as governor of the Bank of South Sudan and named Albino Dak Othow as his deputy. "This is a prerogative of the president to change whoever he wants, and it was in line with the rise of high inflation and the dollar being bought with much more of the local currency," Kiir’s spokesperson, Ateny Wek Ateny, said by phone Friday from the capital, Juba. The new governors promised they w...
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