Sudan wants to sell international Islamic bonds, or sukuk, worth nearly $1 billion this year to help finance the budget, its finance minister said on Thursday. Sudan has been largely cut off from international financing in the past decades due to U.S. sanctions which were lifted in October. Since then, officials have been trying to lure investors to its economy, which has been struggling since the south seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of the country’s oil output, its main source of foreign currency and government income. “The Sudanese government will issue a sukuk (worth) nearly 1 billion dollars for the first time this year,” Finance Minister Mohamed Othman Rukabi told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Tunis. “It will be late this year to finance the 2018 budget,” he said, without giving details. “In Sudan we started already with local sukuk but it will be the first time that will issue sukuk in the international market.” In December, parliament passed its 2018 budget and projected a budget deficit of 2.4 percent of GDP. The budget projects economic growth of 4 percent in 2018, the cabinet said after approving the bill. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects growth for 2017 to come in at 3.25 percent.