Sudan has scrapped a special U.S. dollar/Sudanese pound exchange rate used for wheat imports, effectively removing a subsidy, the finance ministry said on Monday.
The rate changed from 4 Sudanese pounds to 6, bringing it in line with the official exchange rate.
“Changing the price of wheat’s dollar rate comes to remove the damage (resulting from) wheat subsidies,” Finance Minister Badr al-Din Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement.
The removal of the subsidy is partly a result of the global reduction in wheat prices and it will not lead to a rise in bread prices, the finance ministry said.
Protests erupted in Sudan in 2013 when the government announced fuel subsidy cuts.
The big subsidy the government was paying for imported wheat had led to a shortage of the commodity in the market, an official at a state-owned flour mill said.
In July, Sudan’s central bank raised the exchange rate to 4 Sudanese pounds from 2.9 Sudanese pounds to the dollar for wheat imports, effectively reducing the subsidy.
The Sudanese economy has suffered since the secession of oil-producing South Sudan in 2011, which deprived it of about three quarters of the crude oil production it relied on for state revenues and foreign currency used to import food.
