By Yiep Joseph<\/p>\n
As South Sudan prepares for 3rd Juba Economic Forum, stakeholders have raised concerns about high interest rates on loans, which hinders investment on agriculture.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The forum, themed: “Promoting Commercial Agriculture as a Pathway to Economic Stability,” is scheduled to take place from May 13th-15th.<\/p>\n It will convene experts, entrepreneurs, think tanks, business leaders, academics, civil society representatives, and policymakers to discuss the country’s economic challenges, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.<\/p>\n While the forum is anticipated to generate solutions for economic transformation, the issue of high interest rates on loans has emerged as a major obstacle to investment.<\/p>\n Speaking at the launch on Thursday, Stephen Lado, Central Equatoria State (CES) Minister of Trade and Industry, representing the state governor, stressed the need to address the challenges faced by local entrepreneurs, particularly the high cost of borrowing.<\/p>\n He noted that limited access to loans and prohibitive interest rates are stifling investment not only in CES but across the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cYour Excellency, the Vice President of the Republic of South Sudan and the Chairman of the Economic Cluster, there are no accesses to financing in the Republic of South Sudan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe finance that we are seeing you go to commercial banks, you will get the interest rate of 20 to 30%, and that cannot help to promote agriculture or investment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The minister added that the private sectors or individuals\u2019 charges on loans remain high, hence blocking entrepreneurs from borrowing to invest.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you go to private individuals and you are asking for loans or access to financing, it is a 100% interest rate, which is very bad for any economic entity to progress; these are the challenges,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He called on the stakeholders to focus on addressing those challenges in order to improve investment and agriculture as is the case in the neighboring countries.<\/p>\n \u201cThe small and medium-sized enterprises in the Republic of South Sudan are facing a lot of challenges, and that is why you are seeing the regional countries like Kenya and Uganda becoming more productive and exporting their goods to the Republic of South Sudan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n On her part, Josephine Joseph Lagu, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, urged donors and development partners to focus on supporting food production in the country.<\/p>\n She stated that some of the South Sudanese have money; however, they fear to invest due to fear of uncertainties.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are local investors as well as international investors, but people are holding onto their money because they are not sure they are going to return from the industry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can transform our agriculture sector into a commercial industry that will drive our economic growth that will create jobs for our people,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The minister acknowledged that poor transport and insecurity also hindered investment, adding there is a need for the government to improve.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are working to improve the infrastructure in our country alongside other line ministries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It was also reported that South Sudan\u2019s monetary policy committee agreed to retain the central bank\u2019s benchmark interest rate at 15%, according to Governor Johnny Ohisa Damian.<\/p>\n That rate is geared toward helping the central bank achieve key objectives, including gross domestic product growth of 6.8% this year and maintaining headline inflation below 61.5%, the governor said in a statement.<\/p>\n The Bank of South Sudan also urged commercial banks to increase private sector lending to 40% of their deposits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Yiep Joseph As South Sudan prepares for 3rd Juba Economic Forum, stakeholders have raised concerns about high interest rates on loans, which hinders investment on agriculture. The forum, themed: “Promoting Commercial Agriculture as a Pathway to Economic Stability,” is scheduled to take place from May 13th-15th. It will convene[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":33202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Stephen-Lado-Central-Equatoria-State-CES-Minister-of-Trade-and-Industry.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33204,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions\/33204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}