Central Bank of Sudan

After Sudan's independence in 1956, the need arose for a national monetary authority to replace the temporary arrangements, so the Sudanese Currency Board was established as a transitional phase, and in December 1956 a committee of three experts from the US Federal Reserve Bank was formed to study the possibility of establishing a central bank for the country. Based on its recommendations, the "Bank of Sudan Act of 1959" was issued, and the bank officially began its work in February 1960 as a body in its own right, with its own legal personality and the right to litigate in its name, and it inherited the assets of the branches of the National Bank of Egypt in Sudan after they were nationalized and merged with the Currency Board.

The "Bank of Sudan Act of 2002" defined the bank's purposes in four areas: issuing, organizing, monitoring and supervising currency; setting and managing monetary and financing policies in consultation with the Minister of Finance in a way that achieves the national goals of the national economy; organizing, controlling, supervising and developing banking work in a way that achieves balanced economic and social development; and working to achieve economic stability and stability of the exchange rate. The bank also acts as the banker of the central government, state governments and government bodies, keeping and managing their accounts, and as lender of last resort to the banks.

Since 1984 the Islamic banking system has been applied in the country, and in the early 1990s the bank established the Higher Sharia Supervisory Board to ensure that banking operations comply with the provisions of Sharia. The bank's headquarters are in Khartoum, and it is the only body authorized to issue the national currency, the "Sudanese pound" (ISO 4217 code: SDG). In April 2023, the bank's headquarters were destroyed during the ongoing war in the country.

(Sources: Official website of the Central Bank of Sudan cbos.gov.sd, Arabic and English Wikipedia, Archive of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), International Monetary Fund reports)

— Editorial Team