On July 9th, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan officially became an independent country. According to the South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics(NBS), South Sudan has a total population of 8.26 million people and a total area of 644,329 sq. km. More than half of the population is below the age of eighteen. And 51 percent of the population live below the national poverty line.
These data and much more are available from the NBS’s website (http://ssnbs.org). The website contains the Statistical Yearbooks for 2010 and 2009, a report on poverty from the National Baseline Household Survey (2009), a report on priority results from the 5th Sudan Population and Housing Census, as well as other survey and statistical reports. Time coverage of the data varies on the site with most indicators available for 2008 and 2009. Some time series go back as far as 2003 and there are also indicators with data for 2010. The website also provides the following background and description of the NBS:
The South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics was founded in early 2003 (under the name The New Sudan Centre for Statistics and Evaluation) by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). The Centre was established with a mandate to develop the necessary capacity to become the professional source and effective provider of official statistical information for the SPLM-controlled areas. This was in response to the urgent need for basic statistical data in order to support decision-making and enable programme and policy monitoring in the South.
Today, the NBS is an autonomous statistics bureau of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), and is responsible for collecting, coordinating, analyzing and disseminating all official statistical information on economic, social, demographic, environmental and general activities and conditions of the people of Southern Sudan. The NBS is also responsible for conducting all official censuses and surveys in Southern Sudan, including the Fifth Population and Housing Census of Sudan, which will be executed in November 2007 in conjunction with the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in Khartoum and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as well as other development partners.
The Republic of South Sudan was added to the World Bank’s Open Data site with the September 15th update of the World Development Indicators database. Initial data coverage is sparse but we expect to improve on that for the December 15th update. In the meantime, we encourage those looking for data on South Sudan to visit the South Sudan NBS website. Some of the data from that site consistent with the indicator definitions used in the World Development Indicators and African Development Indicators have been extracted and made available in the linked Excel spreadsheet.
The World Bank has also recently published a new report Doing Business in Juba 2011, which measures business regulations in Juba (South Sudan) across 9 topics areas that affect the life of a small/medium-size domestic enterprise. Topics covered: Starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business.
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