A new government’s economic programme should be judged in places where its decisions become tangible: a clinic with medicines, a teacher receiving a salary, a farmer getting a broken pump repaired, a household able to buy food without exhausting its income.

Those outcomes require choices about money, prices, ownership and power. They also require an order of work. Cutting a subsidy is an administrative decision. Making an adequate replacement reach a displaced family, every month, is a larger institutional task.

Sudan’s first year of reform should therefore combine emergency stabilization with changes that rebuild production and bring public resources under accountable civilian control. The calendar can establish deadlines for responsibility and disclosure. Measures that raise essential prices or transfer public assets also need tests of readiness.

This proposal assumes a new civilian government with a credible mandate, uneven territorial access and damaged institutions. Continued major fighting would narrow its reach and require emergency delivery through accessible local institutions and humanitarian partners. The World Bank’s October 2026 outlook likewise makes recovery conditional on security and financing; it does not describe a settled national recovery already under way. World Bank, October 2026.

What structural adjustment should mean here

For this programme, structural reform means changing how revenue is collected, spending is controlled, credit is allocated and production is supported. Stabilization addresses the immediate pressure of inflation, disrupted payments and shortages. A durable programme must connect the two: reliable finances need a functioning economy, while producers need working services and predictable rules.

The Sudanese meta-study by Yassin Eltahir and colleagues, published in 2021, offers a relevant starting question: what institutions must work before market reforms can deliver their intended benefits? Its four-study synthesis uses author-assigned scores and older data, so it cannot establish today’s policy effects. Its recommendation to prepare social-support institutions before withdrawing subsidies deserves examination on its practical merits. Eltahir and colleagues.

Broader reviews do not settle the sequence. Balima and Sokolova’s 2021 meta-analysis of IMF programmes reports a positive average growth estimate with substantial variation. A 2026 preprint by Ricardo Alonzo Fernández Salguero questions its robustness. Neither supplies a Sudan-specific timetable, and the preprint should not be treated as a definitive verdict. Published meta-analysis; preprint.

The choices below are a proposed agenda, open to revision as security, funding and evidence change.

The first 90 days: make the state’s promises payable

The finance ministry’s first task should be a usable emergency budget. It should identify expected receipts, essential spending, unpaid obligations and the gap between them. A rolling cash forecast would show which commitments can actually be paid. Public summaries should distinguish money received from donor pledges, and revenues under the government’s control from revenues it cannot yet reach.

Protecting essential services then becomes a concrete allocation decision. Water systems, medicines, basic education, critical maintenance and essential workers need predictable payments. Payroll verification should include an appeal process: missing records after displacement cannot automatically be treated as proof that a worker is fictitious.

Household support needs more than a list of eligible names. Cash is useful where people can obtain it and buy what they need. Where markets or payment channels are broken, food or direct service provision may be necessary. Temporary coverage of a badly affected locality may be more workable than attempting precise household targeting with unreliable records. Local committees and service organizations can help identify access problems, with oversight to prevent political gatekeeping and exposure of personal data.

Sudan has implementation experience to examine. The World Bank’s February 2025 completion report says Thamarat paid approximately 1.5 million families before the October 2021 interruption. That is reported reach, rather than proof that every family received a full intended payment schedule or a measured improvement in welfare. The institutional review supports learning from existing systems, while also examining their weaknesses. Thamarat completion report.

The central bank and finance ministry should also publish government financing from the bank and agree a path to reduce dependence on it. Any emergency exception should have a ceiling, a stated purpose, lawful oversight, reporting and an expiry date. An unfunded prohibition can push the same crisis into unpaid salaries and supplier arrears; the financing agreement must be matched by expenditure choices and resources actually available.

Payment access and bank diagnosis belong in this opening phase. Authorities should work to restore transfers and access to deposits, assess bank losses and distinguish temporary cash shortages from insolvency. Public recapitalization should follow diagnosis and rules for allocating losses. A sudden nationwide cash replacement or indiscriminate closure programme could impose heavy costs on people already distant from banks.

Fiscal oversight must begin at the same time. Public enterprises and military-linked commercial entities should be required, through lawful civilian authority, to disclose ownership, accounts, guarantees and legally due revenues. Records and assets need protection against unauthorized disposal. Full enforcement may depend on a political settlement, but the obligation to report should not wait for a later privatization debate.

Finally, some spending should restore production immediately: repairing existing pumps and power connections, reopening market access, providing timely seeds and veterinary services, and removing unauthorized levies where enforceable. Agriculture follows seasons rather than cabinet anniversaries. Each intervention needs a local cost, supply and maintenance plan, including provision for legitimate local services previously financed through charges being removed.

By six months: build the capacity to change prices and incentives

The next phase should improve revenue collection fairly. Review discretionary exemptions, large-taxpayer compliance, customs receipts and extractive revenues before relying on broad new burdens on household consumption. Publish who benefits from exemptions and what they cost. Gold receipts require reconciliation and verification; expected recoveries from leakage should not be booked as money already available.

Subsidies should be examined individually. Who receives the benefit? What does the state pay? Would withdrawal raise food or transport costs? Can the alternative protect affected households at lower total cost?

Before changing an essential administered price, demonstrate that replacement assistance reaches people, retains sufficient purchasing power and has financing for successive payments. Include the cost of reaching remote areas and resolving complaints. Where those conditions fail, a temporary, explicitly budgeted protection mechanism may be necessary, with regular review. Keeping an unaffordable arrangement indefinitely also has costs; the government must publish the trade-offs and the funding gap.

Public services remain part of protection. Muez Ali and Laura Mann’s 2023 study traces Sudanese support for cash transfers while questioning their capacity to overcome deeper regional and racial inequalities. It is a political-economy analysis, rather than an experiment measuring every alternative. It usefully widens the question beyond the size of a payment: which communities receive functioning schools, health care and public investment? Ali and Mann.

Exchange-rate reform should move alongside the budget, bank assessment and external financing. Reduce discretionary access to privileged rates, improve legal remittance channels and publish transparent rules. Assess the effects of currency changes on food imports, medicine and bank balance sheets. A fixed rate requires financing; a floating rate still needs credible institutions. Neither label substitutes for the work underneath it.

Debt re-engagement should begin early, with a verified record of obligations, arrears and guarantees. Sudan reached the HIPC debt-relief decision point in 2021; the IMF’s March 2026 resource review records that completion remained outstanding. A new government must establish the requirements with creditors and seek usable financing without promising completion on a domestic political deadline. IMF, March 2026.

Public-enterprise accounts should by now support decisions about tax treatment, procurement, service obligations and losses. Applying common rules can begin before changing ownership. Any proposed sale needs verified title, independent valuation and safeguards against an insider acquiring a public monopoly cheaply.

By one year: turn financial repair into productive recovery

The government should have a medium-term budget that connects spending commitments to plausible revenue and financing. Social-service commitments need expenditure reports showing actual delivery by region. The public should be able to see whether fiscal restraint means less waste, fewer essential services, accumulating arrears, or some combination of all three.

Bank restructuring should proceed case by case, with loss recognition, owner accountability and a funded plan for protecting essential payment functions. Central-bank reform should strengthen its capacity and accountability. The choice of a longer-term monetary arrangement requires separate analysis of reserves, fiscal credibility and legal capacity; it should not be settled by a first-year slogan.

Enterprise reform should also allow several outcomes: improved public management, cooperative or other ownership arrangements, restructuring, or a transparent sale where justified. Each must be assessed against service quality, competition, public cost and the ability to operate the business. Workers need consultation and a funded transition where jobs are affected. Transferring ownership without changing privileged access to contracts and credit can preserve the same concentration of power.

Productive recovery needs a similarly practical test. ERF’s 2022 Renaissance Project for Sudan, also held in the reference library, connects agricultural development to services, institutions and links with industry. Its proposals predate the war and are not an evaluated reconstruction programme. ERF Policy Research Report 40.

For the first year, assess affordable repairs, producer services, storage and processing capacity against larger new projects. Require evidence of local demand, accessible inputs, skilled operation and maintenance. Targeted support for firms or cooperatives should state what capability it is buying, how performance will be checked and when the support will be reviewed. Small projects can also fail; their advantage must be demonstrated through costs and delivery.

Displacement makes land decisions especially consequential. Establish claims and dispute procedures, with producers and communities involved, before granting irreversible concessions. Recovery should give people a credible route back to livelihoods rather than reward whoever can secure a document first.

Who pays, who decides and what happens if funding fails?

The programme needs a financing table alongside its policy table. Grants, concessional borrowing, tax receipts, redirected spending and domestic financing have different costs and conditions. Announced external support should enter spending plans only at the level of certainty its terms justify. Broad deposit guarantees, subsidized credit and private investment guarantees can create future public bills and must be disclosed too.

If expected funding fails to arrive, the government should publish a revised spending plan and protect an explicitly defined core of essential services and assistance. It should postpone lower-priority commitments, review expensive exemptions and negotiate financing before silently replacing grants with unrestricted money creation or new arrears. No sequence can eliminate an unfunded resource gap.

Public participation belongs throughout this process. Producers, workers, displaced communities, women’s organizations, professional bodies and local authorities should be able to challenge both the diagnosis and the distribution of costs. Consultation must include accessible channels beyond online meetings and Khartoum institutions.

At the end of the year, judge the programme through delivered services, food access, real assistance received, productive activity, arrears, payment reliability and transparent accounts. Compare regions and groups as well as national averages. An inflation target or enterprise sale can be recorded as a milestone; its value depends on what it changes in people’s lives.

Sudan’s first year should leave behind institutions that can explain their choices, pay their essential obligations and support people to produce again. That is a demanding reform programme. It gives the next round of decisions a stronger foundation.