The government has announced that James Alic Garang has been sworn in to succeed Johnny Ohisa Damian as the institution’s head.
Following Salva Kiir’s announcement earlier this week that he had dismissed Johnny Ohisa Damian as the bank’s governor, the South Sudanese government has swore in James Alic Garang as the new governor and two of his deputies.
According to state television, the president appointed Garang, an adviser to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to succeed Damian and other senior finance officials in the African nation.
The announcement of the decision did not include a reason, making this the second time in less than a year that the South Sudanese leader has fired the head of the central bank. Local media reports that the decision was made despite worries about the nation’s economic crisis.
The Finance Ministry and Central Bank of the landlocked nation have experienced repeated leadership changes. Only in 2020, the head of the financial institution was changed twice.
In August of last year, Damian succeeded Moses Makur Deng, who had been fired from his position as governor.
Along with replacing the head of the government’s tax authority and other senior officials in the finance and commerce ministries, Kiir also changed the two deputy governors of the organisation on Monday.
The government declared that Garang, the recently appointed central bank governor, and his two appointed deputy officials, Samuel Yanga Mikaya and Nyiel Gordon Kuol, had been inducted into office in a statement posted on X (previously Twitter) on Thursday.
Since the civil war in 2013, which prompted over 25% of the population to flee the nation, South Sudan’s economy has been in decline. The country’s oil output, which historically served as the main engine of its economy, is claimed to have been significantly impacted by the conflict.
