Article Outline
The official unit of currency is the Sudanese pound, divided into 100 piastres. In January 2007 the pound was introduced to replace the dinar, which had replaced a currency also called the pound in 1992. The currency conversion in 2007 was a requirement of the peace agreement that ended the civil war between north and south in 2004. The dinar had not been accepted or commonly used in the predominantly Christian and animist south, where it was considered a symbol of the government’s “Arabization” policies. Islamic law had been applied to banking practices in 1991.
In 2003 imports totaled $2.90 billion and exports, $2.48 billion. Oil dominates Sudan’s exports. Other important exports are sheep, gold, sesame seeds, cotton, and gum arabic. The principal imports are machinery, transportation equipment, iron and steel, cereals, and textiles. The main purchasers of Sudan’s exports are China, Japan, South Korea, France, and Saudi Arabia; chief sources of imports are China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.
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Transportation and Communications
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The Sudanese railroad system, comprising 5,478 km (3,404 mi) of track, links most of the major cities and towns. Supplementing the railroad system is traffic on 5,300 km (3,300 mi) of navigable waterways and 11,900 km (7,394 mi) of roads. Only about 36 percent (1999) of Sudan’s roads are paved. A government-owned airline, Sudan Airways, maintains regular services throughout the country and operates scheduled international flights. Several other domestic and foreign airlines also serve Sudan.
The privatized Sudan Telecommunications Company provides mainline and mobile telephone services and Internet service. The government’s Sudan National Broadcasting Corporation provides radio service in Arabic, English, French, and Swahili. Sudan Television broadcasts about 60 hours of programming per week. A number of daily newspapers circulate in Sudan; all are subject to government censorship.
A 1989 military coup brought the Revolutionary Command Council, under the leadership of General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to power in Sudan. A southern Sudanese rebel group, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), fought government forces until the two sides signed a peace accord in 2004. The peace accord led to a new interim Sudanese constitution, promulgated in 2005, which established a national unity government to oversee a six-year transitional period. The constitution granted significant autonomy to southern Sudan, and allocated 34 percent of the offices in the national unity government to southerners. In 2011, near the end of the six-year transitional period, the people of southern Sudan were to decide by public referendum whether to remain part of Sudan or declare their independence.
Under the 2004 peace accord, Bashir remained president. In 2005 a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the political wing of the SPLA, was named first vice president.
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