Sudan finmin: no retreat on cuts despite protests

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan’s finance minister said on Monday the government would stick to its decision to cut fuel subsidies despite more than a week of anti-austerity protests in Khartoum and other cities.

Sudanese police used teargas to disperse the latest demonstration which took place in an impoverished eastern region on Monday, witnesses said.

The Arab-African country avoided the wave of unrest that toppled leaders in neighbouring Libya and Egypt, but government moves to cut spending and take other austerity measures to plug a widening budget gap have provoked a spate of demonstrations.

Scaling back fuel subsidies is one of the most unpopular measures in the package because it is expected to push up already high rates of inflation for food and other prices.

Finance Minister Ali Mahmoud said the government had no choice but to cut spending to plug a public finance gap he has previously put at $2.4 billion.

“If international oil prices go up, we’ll increase fuel prices. We will not retreat from the decision to lift the subsidies,” he told reporters in Khartoum.

Earlier in the day, about 200 protesters gathered in the eastern town of Gedaref, near the border with Eritrea, chanting “No, no to high prices” and “the people want to overthrow the regime” on Monday, two witnesses told Reuters.

The police were not immediately available to comment.

The most widespread protests so far broke out on Friday in neighbourhoods across Khartoum, expanding beyond the core of student activists who had dominated them.

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Sunday played down the demonstrations as the work of a few agitators whose aims are not shared by the majority of Sudanese.

The capital has been relatively quiet since a security crackdown on Saturday, but activists have continued to try to use discontent to build a broader “Arab Spring”-style movement against Bashir’s 23-year rule.

Late on Sunday, police used batons and teargas to break up a protest in the al-Jerief area in eastern Khartoum after demonstrators blocked a road and burned tyres, witnesses said.

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