South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
South Sudan and Egypt signed on Tuesday memorandum of understanding on economic cooperation and coordination.
The deal signed between the Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. Bak Barnaba Chol and his Egyptian counterpart, Mohamed Maait Ahmed in Cairo aims to boost taxation and enhance capacity building programs in South Sudan.
Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. Bak Barnaba Chol said the deal will enable Egypt to provide technical assistance and support in custom, public financial management, treasury single account, and others.
“We have just signed a memorandum of understanding in that regard and we have then extended our request to have technical assistance and support in custom, public financial management, in treasury single account, in budget and discipline modern enforcement and in different levels,” Chol was quoted in an interview aired on state television in Juba.
He explained that the deal will enhance the country’s capacity building, revenue collection and management.
“We agreed on how they have enforced sufficient tax collection and tax management and ceiling expending and monitoring systems to be able to have an efficient public financial management system,” Chol said.
He said they are aware on how Egypt managed to bring the entire 61,000 different government accounts into single account.
“We have had presentations to those regards. We have benefited together with my team on how they managed to bring the entire 61,000 accounts of the government to one single account.”
Mohamed Maait Ahmed, Egyptian Minister of Finance said the two countries agreed to cooperate on knowledge transfer, experience and systems to boost tax collection.
“We ended by signing memorandum of understanding between the two ministries and our focus is to build an umbrella for all cooperation and coordination between two ministries with regard to public finance,” Mohammed said. He added they also discussed cooperation on transfer of knowledge and systems to enable South Sudan manage oil revenues.
