South Sudan - Institutional Support Project for Strengthening Economic Governance

Oil revenue accounts for more than 98% of public revenue, making South Sudan’s economy largely dependent on oil; hence a need to expand and diversify the non-oil revenue base, especially considering the potential from other revenue sources such as agriculture and animal products, forestry, mining, industry, trade, and tourism. The country started building its government institutions from a low base only less than a decade ago following3 independence in 2011. Since then, some progress has been achieved, as core administrative structures and mechanisms of political representation have been set up. Unfortunately, the decade of conflict in South Sudan has destroyed both human and institutional capacities across governance functions, including generation and management of statistics as a basis for accountability and evidence-based policy decision making in government, the private sector, as well as the non-government organizations. In addition, at independence, the country did not have adequate governance and institutional structures to efficiently manage its financial, economic and natural resources and formulate sound policies. Weak institutional capacities both at the national and state levels have been identified as being at the centre of the country’s failure to sustain peace. Identified challenges include (i) inadequate and lack of disaggregated economic and social data; (ii) incomplete or absence of legal frameworks (i.e., laws and regulations); (iii) inadequate institutional and human capacity; and (iv) inadequacy in policy, strategy and plan for various sector ministriesiii. This has resulted in shortcomings in economic policy planning, formulation and implementation; gender and regional imbalanced public services delivery; poor institutional coordination; limited transparency and accountability frameworks for economic governance; weak resources mobilization; and inefficient public spending and monitoring/oversight.