South Sudan plans to more than double oil production to 290,000 barrels per day in fiscal year 2017/18, the finance minister said Friday, indicating a target higher than the level recorded shortly before conflict erupted in late 2013 . The nation, which seceded from Sudan in 2011 but plunged into civil war just over two years later, aimed to add 160,000 bpd to existing output of 130,000 bpd in the financial year starting in July, Minister Stephen Dheiu Dau told Reuters.

Starved of foreign exchange, South Sudan's pound has plunged in value, inflation soared to more than 800 percent a year and the government of one of the world's poorest nations has struggled to pay state workers and soldiers.

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