{"id":11616,"date":"2012-06-19T11:34:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T09:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/06\/dollar-shortage-tax-hikes-hurt-sudan-telcos\/"},"modified":"2012-06-19T11:34:57","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T09:34:57","slug":"dollar-shortage-tax-hikes-hurt-sudan-telcos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/dollar-shortage-tax-hikes-hurt-sudan-telcos\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollar shortage, tax hikes hurt Sudan telcos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Matt Smith<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">DUBAI, June 19<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; Sudan&#8217;s foreign currency shortage<br \/>\nand a huge variation in official and de facto exchange rates are<br \/>\ndelaying equipment purchases and payments by telecoms operators,<br \/>\nhitting a key industry for the struggling economy, executives<br \/>\ntold Reuters.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Higher taxes and mounting competition are also posing<br \/>\nchallenges for the African country&#8217;s three major telecoms<br \/>\nplayers as they battle to tap the potential of a relatively<br \/>\nunderpenetrated market.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil output when South Sudan<br \/>\nbecame independent in July, ending its main source of state<br \/>\nrevenue and foreign currency.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>That made the telecoms sector even more critical to the<br \/>\nwider economy and it now accounts for about 12 percent of gross<br \/>\ndomestic product, according to No.1 operator Zain Sudan, a unit<br \/>\nof Kuwait&#8217;s Zain.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yet operators are struggling to buy hard currency from the<br \/>\ngovernment.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The availability of foreign currency is a big issue for<br \/>\ntelecoms companies because we depend on imported services and<br \/>\nequipment,&#8221; Zain Sudan chief executive Elfatih Erwa told<br \/>\nReuters.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>He said Zain had sometimes delayed payments to foreign<br \/>\nsuppliers, but these were still delivering on schedule. Ericsson<br \/>\n and Huawei are Zain&#8217;s main suppliers.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>State-owned Sudatel has faced similar problems.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Matt Smith DUBAI, June 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Sudan&#8217;s foreign currency shortage and a huge variation in official and de facto exchange rates are delaying equipment purchases and payments by telecoms operators, hitting a key industry for the struggling economy, executives told Reuters. Higher taxes and mounting competition are also posing challenges for the African [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-11616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}