Sudan positive about economy

Sudanese agricultural production has increased Khartoum - Abedalgoum Ashmeag Sudanese finance minister Ali Mahmoud has said he expects an increase in agricultural production after witnessing a season of heavy rains across Sudanese farmland.In a statement to Arabstoday, he stated that "positive negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan will achieve positive effects especially at the economic level. The oil rigs dispute will soon be resolved, followed by economic measures that will reflect positively on economic stability, thus decreasing the inflation rate, and increasing the exchange rate".Mahmoud added that "the new white sugar mill in Nile State has started production, and will soon achieve self-sufficiency of sugar products with the possibility of increasing exports of such strategic goods".He added that "the positive negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan will achieve positive economic effects especially with the upcoming resolution of the oil rig dispute. Also, oil fields in Sudan are increasing production now while drugs mills will be opened in order to decrease their expensive imports".The Secretary-General for Agricultural Revival, Abdul Aljabbar Hussein, meanwhile said the government was going to great lengths to solve agricultural problems.Hussein said to Arabstoday: "The government is adopting a renaissance programme supervised by the First Vice President Ali Osman Taha, and started implementing a comprehensive plan to solve agricultural problems in Sudan with all its financial, productive, and technical, aspects."He added that "the programme studied in detail other states experiences for developing Sudanese agriculture production (quantity and quality) like China, India, and Brazil...there is a restricted direction from the government for the financial ministry to give priority to agriculture".An agricultural expert and former Minister of Agriculture in Gedaref State, Professor Mamoun Dou el-Bet said that Sudanese agriculture production decreased a lot as the government depended on oil revenues before separation between north and south.He added: "Gedaref state as one of the largest states in Sudan saw a decline in agricultural production due to lack of funding and revenue from agricultural work for farmers, which led to farmers facing financial problems to pay back their debts, where many of them went to prison." Dou el-Bet in his interview to Arabstoday asked the government to "concentrate on agricultural production and solve its problems in order to get out of the economic crisis".He added: "This aim would be achieved if we changed our way of thinking about agricultural facts, as the world talks of producing new competing samples in the international market, at the same time achieving superior returns facing the rising cost of agriculture production".