War: Sudan loses $15 billion

Report- Rihab Abdallah
Sudan Events

Director of the Sudan Office at the Center for International Private Projects, Shaza Balla, has revealed that the losses incurred by the Sudanese economy as a result of the war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Militia, amount to about 15 billion dollars.
The figure was reached based on estimates by the International Food Policy Research Institute in cooperation with American aid and the World Bank, which said the losses amount to about 15 billion dollars that is if the war continues until the end of this year.
She said she has made this remarks during an interview with Radio Dabanga: “It has become a reality today.”
She said that this number is equivalent to 48 percent of Sudan’s gross domestic product, and since last June, a month and a half after the outbreak of the war, Sudan has lost $5 billion in gross domestic product. Expectations were that if the war continued until September, it would lose another $5 billion. By the end of the year, the loss of GDP will reach $15 billion.
She indicated that 70 percent of the industrial sector lost production inputs, workforce, and even ports that export and bring in the raw materials themselves, including Khartoum Airport, are out of service.
She confirmed that the largest share of the destruction affected the industrial sector.
The agricultural sector was considered less affected because the majority of agricultural land is outside Khartoum State, and the loss was estimated at 20 percent, according to estimates by the International Food Research Institute. As for the service sector, it said that the percentage of losses in it amounted to approximately 50 percent, and it is expected that by the end of this year, 5 million people will lose their jobs.
Because of the war, most of these jobs are in Khartoum State and some areas in the Darfur region. However, Shaza is of the view that the real numbers of losses to the Sudanese economy due to the war are much higher than that, and she attributed this to the fact that 70 percent of the activities take place in the unorganized economy sector, which includes street vendors, food vendors, and tea vendors, that is, unorganized labor that does not work through registered companies and in this sector the losses would be really huge.