Thread by @MohanadElbalal

1. Sudan’s economic crisis is a severe supply side crisis which the regime has tried to tackle by boosting consumption. The women in this video tells that oranges sell for the equivalent of 0.3 USD that is a price comparable to what you would pay in the UK
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https://twitter.com/AyinSudan/status/1152300539415281664

2. A country with high labour costs due to a per capita income now 40 times higher than Sudan’s that has to import oranges, that has one of the highest fuel duties in the world making transportation extremely expensive should not be able to match Sudan on the price of agri goods

3. This is able to happen because Sudan’s economic system is extremely broken. Sudanese agricultural producers should be able to massively undercut the costs of Agri goods in a place like the U.K. due to cheap labour, transport & an abundance of agricultural land
#SudanUprising

4. But it doesn’t because the supply side economy has been decimated. Investors are put off investing in production be it agricultural or industrial because the regime’s taxation policy is unclear & often determined by the personal needs of the tax collector.

5. Erratic policy making for example two years ago when I visited a factory in Omdurman’s industrial district they had electricity prices doubled over night. But what damages production the most is how import tariffs have become a principle means for corruption
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6. Looking at this graph on the face of it production should benefit from Sudan having the highest import tariffs in the world because local producers can’t be undercut by foreign ones. But that’s not how the system really works on the ground.
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7. The Sudanese tariff system is the most insidious form of corruption in the country. The regime offers tariff wavers to its members this allows them for example to import a vehicle and sell it at twice the cost to them because they avoid the 100% import tariff
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8. At the same time a genuine businessman seeking to import factory tools or vehicles that would boost production in the country has to pay the exorbitantly high tariffs forcing up his costs. He then has to compete with regime members importing his finished good
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9. Given the much higher profit margin the regime member is running at because he is avoiding import tariffs he can set his prices just at the right level to wipeout the profit margin of the businessman producing the good in Sudan that he is importing from abroad
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10. This all culminates in to a country with sufficient manufacturing capabilities having idle factories & importing Jam from war torn Syria & Salt from Saudi Arabia. Both products I’ve seen in a neighbourhood store in Omdurman, that was 80% import stocked
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