South Sudan suspends hiked work permit fees amid outcry

South Sudan said Saturday that it had suspended implementation of the recently hiked work permit fees for foreign workers and also abandoned planned increase of aviation fees.

Finance minister Stephen Dhieu Dau told reporters that the suspension would allow the government to review the country's financial laws and come up with a fee moderate to the East African region.

He said the proposed work permit fees for foreign workers would not go beyond 5,000 U.S. dollars.

"What we are doing should be consistent with the region. So we should not be seen collecting less or imposing higher," Dau said.

He said the government would also consider reducing taxes on pharmaceutical products from the current 5 percent to 2 percent and agricultural inputs from 10 percent to 5 percent in a bid to reduce prices of medicine and food.

Last month, South Sudan increased work permit fees for foreign workers from 400 U.S dollars to 10,000 dollars for professional/business class, blue collar jobs to 2,000 dollars and casual laborers 1,000 dollars as a measure to fight economic crisis.

But the increment prompted an outcry from humanitarian agencies who described the increment as way of restricting work of foreign aid workers in the war-torn nation.

South Sudan depends on oil revenue for 98 percent of its budget, but civil conflicts since 2013 have caused most oilfields in the country's northern Upper Nile region to shut down as production fell to below 130,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 350,000 bpd.

The East African nation is currently struggling with hyper inflation amid shortage of foreign reserves to support imports.

source: Xinhua