Sudan calls for South Sudan to pay oil arrears

Sudanese Finance Minister Badreldin Mahmoud called on Saturday for South Sudan to pay the arrears and financial disbursements related to passage of its oil through Sudanese soil, Turkish state-owned Anadolu reported.

Mahmoud made the call during a mutual meeting with his South Sudanese counterpart Stephan Dheiu Dau during a summit in Washington.

He also called for the reactivation of a joint Sudanese-South Sudanese committee, supervised by the international community, to seek the cancellation of Sudan’s foreign debts.

Read: Sudan economy to get worse, as inflation rockets

Meanwhile, Dheiu Dau hailed the Sudanese government over its support for peace efforts in his country, receiving refugees and opening terminals between the two countries.

The South Sudanese ambassador to Khartoum said that his country owed a sum of $1.8 billion to Sudan by February 2016, a figure which has almost certainly increased in the ensuing year.

At the end of last year, both countries agreed on settling the revenues to keep up with the low prices of oil that hit the industry over the past couple of years. They also agreed on a certain method to pay the accumulated debts.

The new understanding included cancelling new revenues in case oil prices declined to less than $20 per barrel.