Doing business in Sudan

Most people would be surprised to learn that Sudan has one of the world's fastest growing economies. Admittedly they are starting from a very low level and still have a long way to go but they have seen rapid growth in recent years. The reason for this ability to grow despite constant civil wars and wars with their neighbor's right from the time of their independence in oil. Having oil will allow most countries to grow their economies and Sudan is no different. The good news for the country is that they appear to have a lot more room to grow.

The first thing that you are going to want to do if you are interested in doing business in Sudan is determine if you are actually allowed to. The United States placed sanctions on the country years ago because of their involvement in terrorist activities. Some countries have followed suit while others haven't so you will need to find out what the rules are for your country. Even the though there are sanctions there are a lot of companies doing business in Sudan. This includes a number of American companies who are able to get around by the sanctions by investing in companies that are located in countries that don't have sanctions against Sudan.

The reason that companies are so interested in doing business in Sudan is that there is enormous growth potential. Obviously the oil is a major factor but the country is actually very rich in other mineral resources as well. Most of these minerals have barely been touched so there is potential for the country to grow its economy at a very fast rate for many years to come. Provided of course the fighting can stop long enough to allow these companies to get down to business.

The other reason that there is so much interest in doing business is Sudan is that there is so much work to be done building the country's infrastructure. Sudan has been at war, either with itself or its neighbors, pretty much non-stop for decades. That has left the country with a serious shortage of infrastructure that will all need to be built. Potentially this work could be very lucrative so there is a lot of interest in doing it.

Obviously there are going to be challenges to doing business in Sudan, the biggest is clearly the civil war. This naturally creates some real issues with security that will need to be dealt with. The total lack of any infrastructure is another major problem since that will make it much more expensive to do business. Finding workers will also present a problem, most of Sudan's people work in subsistence farming and have few job skills. There is also the uncertainty of not knowing who the government is going to be and what their policies are going to be. All of these are formidable challenges but there are more than a few companies ready to take them on and start a business in Sudan.