ABSTRACT
Sudan is the largest Arabian state with an area of 2.5 million square kilometres but it has the lowest income per capita among the twelve countries. Just over a quarter of the population lives in Southern Sudan and are both non-Arab and non-Moslem, consisting of Hamitic groups, both pagan and Christian. Lebon's estimate of cultivated land is of significance in our appraisal of the man-land ratio in the Sudan. The Gezira scheme remains the pride and glory of Sudanese agriculture. The Sudan has a very low electricity output and consumption. July 1971 was a turning point for Sudan in a political and economic sense. Planning, in the narrow sense of programming in the public sector, began right after World War Two in Sudan. The main burden of meeting chronic deficits in the balance of current account has fallen on foreign loans and grants advanced to Sudan, the country's holdings of gold and foreign currencies, and building up of foreign liabilities.
