Sudan’s annual inflation hit a new record peak. Sudan’s Central Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday that the annual inflation in September rose to 212.29 percent from 166.83 percent in August. The record high was driven by hikes in bread, vegetable, and transport fares, according to Sudan’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Their economy has suffered from decades of United States sanctions and mismanagement under al-Bashir who had ruled the country since a 1989 military coup. Sudan is approaching $60 billion in foreign debt. Meanwhile, tensions escalated in the east on the 14th after Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s move to fire the newly appointed governor of Kassala province Saleh Ammar.
My take is I wonder how the leaders don’t suffer for this. In America, if we had inflation of 50% or even 25%, I think there would be riots in the streets and people would definitely be calling for the removal of the president. Of course, Sudan doesn’t have it as bad as a country like Venezuela or Zimbabwe, but any amount of inflation is bad. We’re very lucky that our country’s economy is starting up again and unemployment is going down. This kind of inflation is not easy for the region to recover from, and I expect both corruption and revolution in Iraq soon.
In class, we were discussing the levels at which almost all events can be dissected and investigated. The greatest level and piece of evidence I can find is how the Sudanese government, the state level, fixed bread prices in April and that was a pretty significant factor in how Sudan got to this point. Price fixing is illegal in the US for a good reason, and this is it. The Sudanese government fixed the prices on bread, because on a more individual level, the bakeries were suffering bread shortages. The Sudanese government should have let the market stabilize by itself instead of jacking up prices.