20111221
AFP
Sudan has raised taxes on the Internet, mobile phone calls and other telecommunications, the government said on Tuesday, in a bid to help cover lost oil income from South Sudan.

Officials did not say how much extra revenue will be generated from the increases approved by parliament on Monday in the 2012 budget.

Under an emergency three-year economic programme first announced in June, Khartoum plans to cut spending and widen the tax base.

"We are increasing taxation on communication services from 20 percent to 30 percent, and raising taxes on the net profit of communication companies from 15 percent to 30 percent," Sudan's senior tax official Mohammed Osman told reporters.

One component of income tax, affecting most of the population, will also be raised to five percent from three percent, Osman said.

The government already had to introduce an array of austerity measures to cope with the disappearance of oil income from the south, which the finance minister said earlier this month left a budget shortfall of 30 percent.

South Sudan gained independence in July following a two-decade civil war.

Since then, Sudan has witnessed spiralling inflation -- which the government sees reaching 17 percent next year -- and the sharp devaluation of the Sudanese pound.

At the same time crippling debts of almost $40 billion and US economic sanctions, which have banned virtually all trade with Sudan since 1997, choke its access to external financing.

In recent months the Khartoum government has also been fighting costly wars in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, while a long-running conflict in the Darfur region continues.

South Sudan produces three quarters of the now-divided country's 470,000 barrels per day of oil.

Finance Minister Ali Mahmud, speaking at the news conference with Osman, said Sudanese oil production is currently at 115,000 barrels per day but will increase by 65,000 barrels a day.

This will bring in an additional $2 billion in revenue, he said.

That is roughly the amount which the government will continue to pay in subsidies for oil, wheat and sugar, he said in early December.

Parliament asked the minister to study how to gradually remove subsidies.

The International Monetary Fund said in October it expected Sudanese output to contract 0.2 percent this year and 0.4 percent next year, and underlined the need for economic diversification.

Mahmud said the government will increase production of commodities including wheat, sugar and gum arabic.