When the State Vanished… Sudan’s Market Turned into a Gamble

By Muhannad Awad Mahmoud
In economics, not every crisis is caused by war, not every loss stems from a shortage of resources, and not every collapse is the result of external pressures. Sometimes the cause is far simpler — and far more painful: the absence of proper management.
When the state stops reading the market, understanding the dynamics of supply and demand, assessing the country’s real needs, and coordinating among its economic institutions, the market ceases to function as a normal economic space. Instead, it becomes a gambling arena — where some profit merely by timing their bets correctly, while many others lose because no one is managing the scene with a state’s mindset.
This is precisely what is happening in Sudan.
For many years, the Ministry of Trade played a clear and influential role in regulating the market and monitoring commercial activity. It tracked imports and exports, monitored market demand, and sought to balance protecting consumers, supporting local production, preserving foreign currency reserves, and managing strategic commodities.
Then came the era of economic liberalisation. Yet what occurred in Sudan was not genuine economic liberalisation in the proper sense, but rather an almost complete withdrawal of the state from market management.
This distinction is crucial:
Economic liberalisation does not mean the disappearance of the state.
No serious country — no matter how open its economy — completely relinquishes oversight of its trade sector.
In Egypt, despite the market economy, the state still intervenes in the management of strategic commodities, the protection of certain industries, and matters tied to food and economic security. In India, the government regularly adjusts import and export policies according to domestic market interests. Even in highly open economies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, trade is not left to chaos, but remains subject to regulation, oversight, and competition controls.
In Sudan, however, the market appeared to have been left entirely on its own — or more precisely, left to learn through losses.
Take the example of trucks.
Several years ago, when Port Sudan Port faced severe congestion and bottlenecks, what was required was a precise diagnosis of the problem: was the issue unloading capacity, cargo handling, customs clearance, or port operational infrastructure?
Instead, the dominant diagnosis concluded that the crisis stemmed from a shortage of trucks.
That interpretation then evolved into actual policy.
The central bank directed commercial banks to finance truck purchases, while granting customs exemptions on truck imports. A massive buying frenzy followed. Doctors bought trucks. Pharmacists bought trucks. Anyone with a relative abroad attempted to import one, as though the market had suddenly discovered a new goldmine of profit.
It later became clear that the real crisis was not a lack of trucks at all, but rather bottlenecks in unloading and handling operations within the port. In other words, the state treated the wrong illness, thereby creating an entirely new crisis.
Transport prices collapsed. Vast amounts of capital became frozen. Many people lost their savings. Some trucks that entered through the regional market eventually ended up returning to the Jebel Ali Free Zone at heavily discounted prices.
This was not a natural market fluctuation.
It was the price of faulty diagnosis and the absence of sound economic judgment.
Now consider watermelon seeds.
Today, the sector is experiencing a serious crisis, and the immediate question should be:
Does the Ministry of Trade know the size of the remaining stock from last season?
Does it know the scale of current-season production?
Does it know that some market estimates suggest stockpiles of frozen goods approaching 30,000 tonnes in exporters’ warehouses, at average costs of around $1,450 per tonne — meaning tens of millions of dollars trapped and immobilised?
Does it know that some exporters have begun turning to the Egyptian market as an emergency alternative after difficulties in the Indian market, despite selling at losses exceeding 35 per cent merely to reduce the bleeding and recover part of their liquidity?
And has the ministry acted?
Has there been any serious engagement with the Indian side, one of Sudan’s most important export markets, especially given the existence of diplomatic channels and official communications?
Or has the market simply been left to face collapse alone?
India — whether one agrees with its decisions or not — acted in accordance with the logic of protecting its domestic market and national producers. That is what states do.
But where is the Sudanese state?
Take another example: reinforcing steel.
At the time of writing, the market is clearly suffering from oversupply. Sudanese companies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to factories abroad — particularly in Egypt — to import steel shipments into Sudan, even as one of the country’s largest local factories was preparing to begin production.
Imported steel arrived at precisely the same moment local output entered the market.
The result?
Warehouses full of unsold steel.
Frozen capital.
Goods that could no longer compete with the prices of locally manufactured products.
Heavy losses borne by investors.
Meanwhile, revenue-collecting authorities appeared interested only in fees, taxes, and levies.
But the central question remains:
Was the Ministry of Trade monitoring import volumes?
Did it know the scale of incoming local production capacity?
Did it read the market before the collision occurred?
Or was everyone operating in isolated islands until losses became inevitable?
The problem does not stop at foreign trade. There is a deeper flaw in the very philosophy of commercial activity itself.
Are commercial licences issued based on genuine assessments of market demand, or merely on revenue-collection logic?
Take Al-Sajana Market, Sudan’s largest construction materials market. In plumbing supplies, electrical goods, cement, reinforcing steel, and other sectors, supply often far exceeds actual demand, while overcrowding among identical businesses is obvious.
Then comes an even more painful contradiction:
The government itself — potentially the market’s largest purchaser — sometimes grants exemptions and special privileges to certain projects or investments, allowing them to import their requirements directly from abroad, thereby weakening demand within an already saturated local market.
How can the local market be expected to survive while purchasing power is simultaneously being drained away from it in major sectors?
This is not the problem of one trader.
It is the problem of the absence of a coherent vision.
And here we reach the heart of the crisis.
Sudan does not suffer from a shortage of traders, nor from a lack of individual initiative, nor even solely from a shortage of capital. Rather, it suffers from the absence of institutional commercial intelligence.
Serious states do not wait for crises before reacting. They maintain institutions that monitor markets, inventories, price trends, export opportunities, dumping risks, and shifts in demand — then build decisions on information, not surprises.
In Sudan, however, responses too often come only after the losses have already occurred.
Then comes the larger question:
Does Sudan actually possess a trade policy?
Is the objective merely to open the doors and let the market fight for itself?
Or is there a broader vision linking trade with production, agriculture, industry, foreign exchange, and the protection of national capital?
Trade is not merely the movement of goods across borders. It is an instrument of sovereignty. A tool for protecting the economy. A means of directing investment. A safeguard preventing the national capital from repeatedly falling into predictable traps.
That is why the Ministry of Trade requires more than a conventional bureaucratic administration. It needs leadership capable of understanding the real market, reading indicators, and comprehending the movement of capital, inventories, and the behaviour of importers and exporters — because trade is not desk work; it is the pulse of an entire economy.
What Sudan needs today is neither a return to a closed economy nor a continuation of market chaos. It needs a state that regulates, analyses, and acts before disaster strikes, not afterwards.
Because a state that leaves its market to chance is not managing an economy.
It is managing a gamble.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=14153