Post
Topic
Board Economics
Merits 3 from 2 users
Topic OP
Rampant inflation, yet a steady exchange rate.
by
NotATether
on 05/09/2020, 17:12:17 UTC
⭐ Merited by LoyceV (2) ,Upgrade00 (1)
I ordered a few boxes of pizza today, and the total bill was 3200 SDG. That's close to about $55. Imagine if you suddenly have to pay thousands of bucks for a few boxes of pizza, that would be madness for locals. Sudan has really been hit with bad, uncontrollable inflation that spirals up by two digit percentages every year. I should mention that the government thinks printing more money is going to solve the sky-high (at least for local residsnts) bread and gas prices. Which is causing shortages of those items to the point that keep selling out quickly. (I felt my share of those.) Before 2019, there wasn't a banknote printed larger than 50 SDG. And all of a sudden, I start seeing 100 and 500 SDG banknotes printed in large batches, what in the world is going to back the value of this currency? Nobody is going to buy SDG bonds.

Speculators aren't helping improve this situation, just as with any other inflated currency. They keep shorting the Sudanese Pound and costing the central bank a lot of money, since in the Forex market, when somebody wins, someone else on the other side loses. These's even a crackdown on people who are holding US dollars you can read about here: https://allafrica.com/stories/202006190164.html

Inflation's up to 114% according to that link. Considering how it's been climbing up thr last several months, I don't expect it to get better at all in the future. This is part of the reason I started accumulating bitcoins, because it is immune to inflation. I just can't buy anything here with it.

And yet, the USD/SDG exchange rate is stuck at 55 since Feburary (and I also felt my share of price hikes when that happened). Doesn't inflation also cause exchange rates to increase, in an inflationary way?