South Sudan angered by World Bank 'exclusion'

JUBA

South Sudan has denounced its exclusion from the Global Human Development Report published by the World Bank and the UNDP annually.

The report gives a picture of the performance of countries in providing services.

Presidential adviser and former finance minister Aggrey Tisa Sabuni said South Sudan had not been rated in all the annual global human development reports published by the World Bank since the country became independent in 2011.

Mr Sabuni made the remarks in Juba on Wednesday during the launch of the South Sudan National Human Development Report, officiated by second Vice-President James Wani Igga.

He said the UNDP had also excluded South Sudan from its annual reports before and after independence.

The reports, Mr Sabuni observed, were critical since they portrayed how countries were doing in terms of providing services such as health, education, water, food security, nutrition, information and civil freedoms.

“We want to know how our performance compares with those of others and compare with desirable benchmarks. We want to know how we are serving our people in terms of services and many other desirable of attributes in life,” he said.

"Not to be reflected in the community of nations in these respects has been disturbing and unwelcoming and shows a sense of global isolation."

However, the World Bank earlier said South Sudan lacked data to produce the required indicators and hence its exclusion from the global human development reports.

Mr Sabuni, who is career economist, challenged the global financial agency, saying the problem was the failure by institutions that provide input for the global human development report to capture the available data in the country.

“It is good for the country to know how it performs so that the leadership will be prompted to scale up its development plans appropriately,” he said