The Central Bank Circular: A Bankruptcy Writ for the Private Sector

By: Muhannad Awad Mahmoud
While all of Sudan was ablaze—citizens expelled from their homes, shops burned, cars looted, buildings shelled, and people forcibly displaced from their capital—there was no protector left for the people except their armed forces. They answered the call when Commander-in-Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared general mobilisation. The people, men and women, young and old, opened their homes to the fighters, cooked with tears for those on the frontlines, collected money, and sold their gold and livestock in support and mobilisation. Those who left their jobs, businesses, and families, the fighters who rushed to the frontlines, and the citizens who clung to hope instead of walls—all of them paid the price for the state’s survival. They asked for nothing in return but for the state to remain a state, not a financial monster finishing what artillery failed to destroy.
But the Central Bank of Sudan had another view. It did not fight in the trenches, flee on the roads, or suffer displacement from its homeland. Instead, it sat in its offices, counting the remaining balances, lying in wait for the moment to strike the harshest blow into the side of Sudan’s wounded economy. On 25 July 2024, the Bank issued a circular—officially circulated on 21 April 2025—titled “Addressing War Losses and Creating Financing Provisions.” The circular shattered hopes, betrayed expectations, and revealed a financial vision devoid of human or national perspective. It treated the financial crisis faced by companies, individuals, and productive sectors as ordinary delinquency—no war, no destruction, no force majeure, no fires or looting, no factory shutdowns, no paralysed ports, no supply-chain collapse. It set a repayment deadline of no more than 18 months, starting October 2024, in which affected institutions must fully repay their debts or face comprehensive legal enforcement.
What kind of mockery is this? What financial logic treats the outcome of an existential war as a mere accounting error? What blind circular emerges from an institution meant to be the last refuge of the citizen, only to turn into a creditor, an enforcer, and an internal adversary?
The whole world, when faced with major crises, has offered lessons in how to preserve economies without crushing citizens. In the 2008 global financial crisis, the United States launched the TARP program, directly injecting USD 700 billion to support banks and corporations, not to liquidate them. In the UAE, recovery periods for companies were extended by four years, with stimulus packages and government-backed financing. In Europe, EUR 750 billion was allocated post-COVID to support the private sector, with governments covering wages for employees in shutdown firms. Even in Sudan itself, during the avian flu crisis, when millions of poultry were culled, the Central Bank extended repayment terms for affected companies by three years—a decision deemed wise at the time. So how, by God, could chickens deserve more consideration than the Sudanese people—their companies, their factories, their shops, and their workers?
The Sudanese citizen who protected the capital from collapse, who endured and resisted, who became the last hope in the absence of state institutions, is today rewarded with this unjust circular that has opened the way for commercial banks to pounce on what remains of their mortgaged assets and properties under the Collateral Assets Law. The circular whetted the appetite of the Bank Prosecution, reactivated in Khartoum, which has prepared its agents, received files, restored access to the land registry, and completed all legal instruments for the largest collective extortion operation against war victims.
The current Governor of the Central Bank has issued no national statement, no exceptional financial plan, no transparent press conference to explain his intentions. Instead, he opted for complete disengagement—turning his back on the war, letting institutions collapse and citizens be crushed—continuing in the role of “financial observer” as if the country had not just endured one of the ugliest urban wars of the modern era. For this reason, we demand his immediate dismissal and the appointment of a patriotic figure with both national conscience and economic will to address the catastrophe.
We call upon Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to issue an urgent sovereign decree restructuring the debts of the devastated private sector for no less than ten years, backed by government guarantees, with the Central Bank mandated to cover the deficits of commercial banks through a special financing window under the title “Creditworthiness Support Facilities for War-Affected Commercial Banks.” This is standard global practice during major crises.
We also call upon Minister of Justice Dr. Abdullah Dirf and the Attorney General to activate the Force Majeure Law, which remains in force across Sudanese law—in contracts, labour, insurance, and commerce—yet has been deliberately suspended in financing cases to enable banks to prey on victims rather than treat them as partners. Failure to activate this law is legal collusion unworthy of a country that seeks justice.
The Sudanese Businessmen Association must also bear its historic responsibility. It has proven ineffective, silent, and reduced to a hollow bureaucratic body that neither protects its members nor defends the private sector—the backbone of Sudan’s economy. We demand its reactivation or dissolution and restructuring on genuine representative foundations.
We stand at a decisive moment: either the state sides with its citizens, or it formally declares alliance with economic chaos. If this circular is not immediately suspended, it will unleash an unforgiving economic tsunami, destroying what remains of citizens’ trust in their country, prolonging exile, deepening the rift between people and state, and paralysing revenues such as taxes, production fees, licenses, and customs, ultimately bankrupting the state.
Let it be known: the people who rose alongside their army will not accept being slaughtered by their own state institutions.
If Sudanese banks proceed with foreclosures and executions on citizens’ properties and assets—without regard to what they have suffered, without compassion or acknowledgement of the scale of the catastrophe—then they are, without ambiguity, complicit in aggression. Their actions will stand on par with those of the terrorist militia: there is no difference between the one who shelled a house with a rocket and the one who seized it through an unjust court order.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=7058