A new UN report is questioning the glaring discrepancies in South Sudan’s 2023/24 financial year expenditure reports.
According to a report by the UN Panel of Experts seen by Radio Tamazuj, the South Sudanese government collected more revenue than it had anticipated, despite a substantial decline in oil revenues during the fourth quarter.
The government, the report says, was therefore able to spend a total of SSP 2.43 trillion against a budget of just SSP 1.78 trillion.
The South Sudan economy depends almost entirely on oil sales.
The report points out that according to the same documents, every category of budgeted spending received less than the amount allocated.
“The Government has since confirmed, for example, that less than half the salary budget was paid,” says the report.
South Sudan is currently facing a severe state salaries crisis, with widespread reports of delayed and unpaid civil servants, including teachers, doctors, and security personnel. The crisis is deeply intertwined with the country’s economic struggles, particularly its reliance on oil revenue and the impact of the ongoing conflict.
The UN report notes that since control over South Sudan’s public resources is highly centralized, they were vulnerable to political pressure, misappropriation, and diversion. Public officials and the communities that depend on them, discloses the report, often view revenue allocation as a zero-sum competition for a limited pool of resources.
“You know you can be removed at any time,” the Panel quotes one former official, also noting that almost all public officials in South Sudan were incentivized to “pay contracts and get kickbacks.”
“Senior officials within the Office of the President and Ministry of Finance and Planning often dictate which companies are awarded the cargos of crude oil sold by the government, although an auction process sets the price. These are often companies willing to advance a significant percentage of the value of the cargo a few months before it is received,” it explains.
In some cases, senior officials award cargos to preferred local companies, which then trade them on to larger international traders, with the local companies often taking a substantial fee.
The former official, however, notes that there were also many public officials who resisted the temptations.
The oil revenues, the report explains, were deposited in the government’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, from which funds were transferred to various banks in Kenya, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates. Larger payments were made directly from these accounts, while some cash was also shipped by air to Juba.
“In some cases, officials seek to circumvent these mechanisms by instructing buyers of oil to make payments directly to third parties. In one example, for instance, one trader was asked to pay the remaining proceeds of one cargo of crude oil to Amuk General Trading, which the Panel has previously reported was a major supplier of off-budget food supplies for SSPDF. Such arrangements violate South Sudanese law, which requires all oil revenues to be deposited first in government accounts, and the Panel has not been able to determine whether these instructions were followed by the buyer.”
The report cites the largest diversion since 2018 as the allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the oil-for-roads program. According to figures produced by the Ministry of Finance and Planning, for example, during the 2023/24 financial year, SSP 378 billion was allocated to the program, almost as much as the SSP 414 billion allocated to the government’s salaries and operating expenses.
The theft of state money, the report discloses, sometimes resulted in conflict, particularly when there were insufficient resources to meet competing demands. In November 2023, for example, a senior official complained that the Ministry of Finance and Planning had allowed a trader to retain more than $9 million as part payment toward an overdue debt. The official argued that the sum should instead have been paid to a company engaged in the construction of the new presidential palace in Juba.
The competition for the dwindling resources of South Sudan was also evident in the country’s relationship with the commercial lenders that have supplied several billion dollars in loans since around 2012. The government is required to service these loans, many of which carry high interest rates, with regular payments. Since around 2018, however, the government has largely stopped repaying these loans.
As a result, in its report dated 29 April 2024 (S/2024/343), the Panel reported that, in January 2024, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes had ruled that the Government and Central Bank of South Sudan owed the Qatar National Bank $1,021,282,210 in unpaid loans and interest.
On 31 January 2025, the African Export-Import Bank also appeared in commercial courts in London claiming that the Government of South Sudan owed $657 million in unpaid oil-backed loans and interest, $640 million of which had been guaranteed by the Central Bank of South Sudan.
According to court documents, South Sudan had borrowed $400 million in 2019, $63 million in August 2020, and a further $250 million in December 2020. The government had also sought to borrow an additional $1 billion in October 2023 and an additional $3 billion in January 2024. Juba neither contested the claims nor participated in the court proceedings, according to the Panel.
The cumulative commercial debts of South Sudan now likely exceed at least $2.1 billion, equivalent to one to two years of total government oil revenues prior to the pipeline breach.
Revenues were also diverted from institutions that do not form part of the formal budget process. On 9 September 2022, Petronas International Corporation Ltd. informed the Government of South Sudan of its intention to sell its shares in all three of the joint operating companies that produce oil in South Sudan. After a protracted process, on 23 January 2024 and 5 March 2024, the government informed Petronas that it would not sanction the sale and instead directed the company to hand its assets over to Nilepet. In August 2024, Petronas initiated arbitration proceedings against the Government of South Sudan at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
The Panel of Experts was established pursuant to resolution 2206 (2015) on 3 March 2025 and was considered by the Committee on 1 July 2025.