CAIRO: Sudan appointed a prominent banker to head its central bank on Sunday, state news agency SUNA said, in the latest sign of an overhaul of senior posts in the Arab-African state hit by a shortage of hard currency.

Sudan's economy has been in turmoil since South Sudan seceded in 2011, taking with it about three-quarters of the country's oil production. Oil is the main source of government revenues and dollars, needed for food and other imports."President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir issued a decree to appoint Abdel Rahman Hassan, head of (Khartoum's state-run) Omdurman National Bank since 2006, as new central bank governor," SUNA said in a statement.

The central bank devalued the Sudanese pound by 22.6 percent against the dollar in November, the second such move in just over a year.

Hassan is a board member of Sudan's Bank Deposit Security Fund (BDSF) and a representative of the union of Sudanese banks.