An economic conference between South Sudan and major international donors and financial institutions agreed to work together to help the north-east African country address short term financial issues as it prepares to resume oil production.
The one-day conference was convened by the U.S. State Department, Department of the Treasury and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC.
The meeting, which had participation from the UK, Norway, European Union, the United Nations Development Program and United Nations Mission in South Sudan, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the African Development Bank, focused on the South Sudan economic and humanitarian situations, and implementation of the oil agreement it made with Sudan earlier this month.
The South Sudanese ministerial delegation made a comprehensive presentation on their economic situation and their ongoing austerity and reform measures, the U.S. Satate Department said in a statement.
South Sudan seceded from the North on July 9, 2011 bifurcating Africa's largest country. Despite the partition, North and South Sudan have a lot of work remaining to put in place, such as arrangements on security, citizenship, international treaties, economics, a soft border and natural resources.
The unsettled issues also include the amount of oil proceeds to the North during a transition period before they lose most of their revenue from the South's oil, and problems of ownership of the pipeline and other complicated structural issues in how to run the oil sector when countries divide.
South Sudan is possessing 80 percent of the immense oil resources that have been the common asset of undivided Sudan, but Sudan is controlling the pipeline that brings this oil to market, as the port used to ship it abroad is in the North. Both parties are yet to resolve oil and transitional financial arrangements
Since South Sudan's independence, peace between the two countries has been threatened by clashes along their common border and post-independence issues, including the ownership of the Abyei area which straddles the two countries, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
South Sudan has been hard at work over the past year building governing structures and a foundational legal framework. The United States and the European Union have been providing significant support to the government.
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