| Can't for the life of me figure why... |
After the signing of two landmark peace deals, Sudan's unrealized potential is attracting scores of foreign investors but obstacles remain and many business plans never leave the drawing board. The January 2005 North-South agreement that ended decades of civil war kick-started the country's moribund economy and investors hope that efforts under way to end the country's other war in Darfur will confirm the trend.The oil sector remains by far the largest recipient of foreign direct investment and is dominated by China and Malaysia. "Of the $6 billion invested since 1999 by foreigners in the country, half has gone into oil," said Farouk Kaddouda, professor of economics at Ahliya University in the capital's twin city of Omdurman. With proven reserves of 563 million barrels and output set to rise to 650,000 barrels per day by the end of the year, Sudan has become one of the continent's petroleum heavyweights, behind Libya, Nigeria and Angola. Other sectors of the economy, however, have generated more tepid interest from international investors, with almost exclusively Arab countries taking the leap.