Zalingei , May 18(Darfur 24)Lack of cash in the markets of Central Darfur state led to an increase in the prices of food commodities and forced some to resort to bartering goods in order to obtain their needs.
Trader Adam Ahmed told Darfur 24 that the absence of cash, especially large denominations, has doubled the burden on citizens.
He stressed that the greatest burden falls on those who depend on remittances from their relatives outside Sudan and workers in government and private institutions who receive money through Bankak application service of the Bank of Khartoum.
Khadija Adam, a vegetable seller in Zalingei market, explained that she had to exchange bags of onions for bottles of oil, due to the lack of money from the market.
She said that what prompted her to barter was that she lost large sums of money last week when she tried to obtain cash in exchange for her electric sum, as she resorted to harassment to preserve the capital of her merchants.
In turn, Al-Tayeb Al-Taher, the gross trader, said that the decline in banknotes threatens economic security, and has also caused commodity prices to rise insanely.
Al-Taher attributed the reason for the scarcity of banknotes to the failure of currency merchants on the Chadian border to receive “your bank” as they ask for banknotes of large value, which led to an accumulation of banknotes in the border areas.
He added: “The matter was exacerbated by the lack of export through which banknotes were retrieved for other regions.”
He stressed that merchants from Zalingei markets and other markets carry large amounts of cash to buy goods from the markets of Forbarnqa, Adre and Umm Dukhun and inside Chad, as this leads to the accumulation of banknotes in the warehouses of border merchants and inside Chad.
The decline of the Sudanese pound against the Chadian franc contributed to the rise in the prices of food commodities in the markets of Central Darfur State.
Many commodity merchants in Central Darfur stopped dealing with the bank service due to the scarcity of banknotes, which caused confusion for state workers who receive their salaries from the state government, which has been based in Kosti, White Nile State, since the first months of the outbreak of the war.