Face of Truth | Ibrahim Shaglawi A Decision That Enters Homes Without Permission..

Yesterday, the Sudanese government raised the customs dollar rate to 3,222 pounds compared to 2,827 pounds previously, at a time when the dollar in the parallel market continues to approach 4,150 pounds. This decision comes within a highly complex economic and political context, where the impact of war intersects with the decline in citizens’ purchasing power, and the widening gap between lived reality and the promises of the Government of Hope to alleviate the burden on citizens and support livelihoods.

On the surface, the decision appears to be a productive financial measure, but in Sudan it quickly turns into a socially impactful event. It is well known that the economy does not stop at the limits of procedures and numbers, but extends directly into the details of daily life.

Any change in import inputs does not remain confined to ports or offices; rather, it is directly reflected in the market, then in households, and then in people’s ability to meet their basic needs.

What draws attention is not only the increase in the figure, but also its timing and context. The Sudanese citizen, already facing the pressures of war, declining income, and rising prices, receives this decision as another link in a long chain of accumulated pressures resulting from the war. Here, the most impactful condition takes shape: a general feeling that the cost of stability or managing the state at this time is gradually being reformulated to ultimately settle on the shoulders of the citizen who lacks the capacity to bear it.

In this context, the question is no longer about explaining the decision, but about the extent of its alignment with the official discourse presented by the government in the 2026 general budget, along with its promises to ease living burdens and support citizens. Between the discourse of “supporting livelihoods” and the reality of “pricing life upward,” a real and influential gap widens—one measured not only economically, but in the level of trust between the citizen and the state.

This gap is not merely financial; it is a gap in the general sense of coherence. The citizen finds themselves facing contradictory messages: promises of relief on one hand, and decisions that increase pressure on the other. With the repetition of this pattern, the sense that there is a unified vision managing the state diminishes, replaced by the impression that decisions emerge from multiple tracks that do not always converge at a single point.

This decision reveals the nature of the state in a moment of war, when priorities are divided between managing the security crisis, regulating the economy, and sustaining daily life under limited resources and increasing pressures. The challenge, therefore, is not in the decision itself, but in the state’s ability to present a coherent image of its policies, so that society does not feel that each sector operates in isolation from the other.

Yet the greatest impact remains primarily social. The rise in import costs does not remain a commercial matter; it quickly translates into higher prices for food, medicine, transportation, and education—elements that form the essence of daily life.

With the continuation of this pattern, purchasing power gradually erodes, and the general feeling grows that life itself has become more expensive, with no sufficient capacity to endure.

Despite differing interpretations—between those who see the increase in the customs dollar as an attempt to bring the official rate closer to the parallel market and reduce monetary distortions, and those who see it as a sharp increase that reproduces inflation and pressures society without adequate protection—the common denominator among these views is that the cost of the decision is rapidly transferred to society, as the weakest and most fragile link in the economic chain.

Before this measure turns into a reality that is difficult to contain, reviewing the decision appears to be an urgent necessity—a review that does not imply retreat as much as it implies reassessing timing and impact, and aligning the decision with the actual capacity of society to endure. Sound governance in such times is not measured by the rigidity of decisions, but by their flexibility and capacity for correction, especially when their impact extends into the details of life.

According to #Face_of_Truth, the rise in the customs dollar transforms the entire phase into a strained reality, where war intersects with the economy, necessities intertwine with policies, and decisions move to enter people’s homes without permission, while daily life remains the true testing ground for all declared reforms. Thus, the presence of the state is measured by its ability to regulate the distance between what is formulated in institutions and what is lived in homes. When this distance shrinks to the point of suffocation, every economic decision becomes a fully impactful social event, reshaping life.

Wishing you continued health and well-being

Sunday, April 12, 2026

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