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Mahyoub Al-Kamali The Yemeni economy entered a new stage after the parliament and the Shura Council approved the second Five-Year-Plan (2001 - 2005). The joint committee set up by the parliament and the Council made a number of remarks with regard to improving the living conditions, as well as the social care network and developing the domestic resources. The overall cost of the projects to be launched within this plan is YR 2,449,723,000,000. As the government has failed to implement a series of projects, including the creation of a stock market exchange and a project to export the liquefied gas, the parliament and the Shura Council called for working out new mechanisms to implement the crippled projects. The second Five-Year Plan expects an annual increase in the local production by 5.6%; while the expectations of the first five year plan was an annual increase of 7.2%. However, in practice the economic policy achieved a growth that had not exceeded 5.5% of what had been expected in the first Five Year Plan. The remarks of the both the parliament and the Shura Council stressed the necessity to introduce administrative and judicial reforms to fight corruption, alleviate poverty and to combat tax and custom evasion. The second Five Year Plan also predicts an annual intermediary growth for the gross domestic product GDP by 8% and an increase in public expenditure by 12% for reforming the salary payroll. The remarks of the committee further stressed the importance of bypassing the irregularities that appeared in the first Five-Year Plan in the following domains: • Establishing infrastructure projects so as to boost the national exports, • Promoting the establishment of projects in the rural areas so as to curb immigration from the rural areas to cities, • Promoting the projects of the Agriculture & Fish Promotion Fund so as to grant loans to farmers and fishers, • Consolidating efforts to encourage the tourism sector for more active participation in the domestic product, and • Outlining policies for promoting industries that depend on locally produced raw materials. The priority area of the second Five-Year plan is attaching importance to mobilizing the resources through the local councils and enhancing the administrative and financial decentralized system of governance. Similarly, the plan aims at reducing the population growth rate to 3%, a rate that had remained at 3.5% during the first year plan. It is expected that the population will roughly mount to 21 million in 2005. Thus, the joint committee of the parliament and the Shura Council recommended the government to render more care to the health sector, particularly in the rural areas and to create a good insurance system for the civil servants and the militaries. Furthermore, the committee recommended the government to attach importance to the government-provided basic education and supporting the Social Fund for development, the National Program for the Development of Productive families plus financing the projects implemented by the Public Works Project. The plan expects an increase in the individual income from YR 75,276 in 2000 to YR 84448 in 2005 as an annual average growth rate of 2.3%. The plan’s data indicates the weakness of the role of women in the economic field, as it only represents 22.7% most properly owing to the high rate of illiteracy. Consequently, the plan attaches importance to the issue of human resources development through raising the expenditure on education. As far as the financial sector is concerned, both the Parliament and the Shura Council urged the government to maintain stable financial and exchange rates, activate the Exchange Profession Law and to limit the speculations at the exchange markets. The plan also aims at controlling the inflation at a rate that does not exceed 6%. It is also expected that the plan would achieve an annual surplus rating at YR 72.557 million in 2005 and an overall surplus of YR 457.8 billion. Nevertheless, the most important challenges facing the plan is the concentration of 74% of the population in the rural areas plus the water problem. The Ministry of Communication has recently revealed new plans aiming at the development of the internet services in Yemen, as well as the establishment of the ‘Gateway’ project. Sources at the Ministry said the project would be the first step in the establishment of the e-government in Yemen through using up-to-date information technology, newest ideas, standards, techniques, styles and establishing data processing network. The USD 1 million project is expected to provide high speeds and other features. In this regard, a symposium was held in Sana'a titled "Takeoff towards E-Government" in which a number of specialists and experts participated and discussed the essential technical methods to establish the Yemeni Gateway for internet and to establish information network connected to the international network. During the symposium participants reviewed the project and its objectives, constituents, characteristics as well as its accomplished phases and horizon developments. The participants mapped out the strategic outline of the projects to be accomplished immediately, taking into consideration making of the project a success. The project will be operated through 25 sites in Yemen and will also connect subscribers to the international internet networks through telephone lines. For the first time, the Ministry of Communication will implement this project not for profitable purposes but for providing better services for subscribers. Within the framework of this objective, the project will also provide universities and academic institutions with all the requirements needed to make advantage of this technology. The network will also provide Arabic information exchange, which facilitates transferring information among networks at the regional and international level. Statistics of the general budget of the government revealed that there was a certain kind of carelessness to improve exports of non-oil resources. Efforts have been proved abortive to improve the cultural and industrial production sufficiency. As opposed to this, other countries have proved to be more serious to develop their revenues such as, Japan, and Southern Korea. In this respect, Yemen and other developing countries have continued to utilize its oil wealth, which is an inexhaustible resource, indifferent to thinking of other resources to guarantee national income through involving the private sector in this respect. At the same time, Yemen's economy is in bad deteriorating condition; chronic deficit in the budget is also on the wane. The Budget's draft law has to assimilate new ideas with regard to the strategic location of Yemen, tourist and spacious sites, mineral wealth, arable land, increasing exports and imports. It is noticeable that our local markets have suffered from recession as a result of the high increase in commodities and local services against the reduction of the purchasing power with regard to the majority of the people. This will, of course, entails looking for foreign markets to export our local products to. Local producers see that the local products, the duty procedures and compound taxes are an impeding problem for their activities to gain financial revenues in which local industrialists' products can prosper. They say revenues from exports will provide them with hard currencies and overliquidity from foreign currencies to be utilized in production. Instead of laying great stress on non-oil export development in its second five plan, industrialists want the government to adopt practical measures with a view of encouraging them to export their products and to face the requirements of the local market demands. Industrialists confirm that orientation towards foreign markets has resulted in a high increase in industrial production cost due to the burdens which face the local factory owners including, bad banking services, transportation, and non-availability of adequate safety insurance. The other impeding problem is related to small producers who desire to develop their products and purchase their needs from local markets and the result is the loss of their commodities and inability to compete with other products in the foreign markets. The small producers have therefore demanded the necessity to provide essential requirements to their products at suitable prices in the local markets. This will of course encourage them to export some of their products to the adjacent foreign markets. The national industrialists confirm that the government's failure to develop the local non-oil revenues can be ascribed to the improper use to develop the agricultural and industrial sectors. They suggest that the commercial specialized banks should have a role in offering credits, orienting savings and financial resources towards exhortations. In a nutshell, supporting the process of exportation is the proper policy to improve the balance payments, develop the growth rate and to provide new job opportunities for the unemployed. This can be achieved through improving profitable resources for the national income through non-oil exports and involving the private sector in this aspect. Karen Dabrowsky WS Atkins a British-based environmental consultancy has been highly commended in the annual British Consultants Bureau (BCB) British Consultancy Firm of the Year Award 2001 for its work on the Socotra Archipelago Master Plan. The plan focuses on improving the standard of living for the island’s residents while at the same time protecting its unique environment. The Director of WS Atkins Environmental Consultancy, David Carr, said , “We are delighted to have had our work on Socotra recognized by the British Consultants Bureau. “Socotra, which is off the coast of Yemen, is notable for the wealth of its endemic species of animals and plants, which make it of world class environmental importance. Planning development for the people of the island, who presently depend on the natural environment for their livelihoods, at the same time as protecting this unique environment proved to be a challenging task. I am pleased to say it is one to which the team responded extremely well, overcoming significant logistical problems in the process. “So although it is just one of many projects across the world, where we have delivered a fully integrated economic, social, physical and environmental solution, we are particularly pleased to have had our Socotra project recognized in this award”. The $1 million masterplan was commissioned by Yemen’s Environmental Protection Council and the Ministry of Planning and Development and financed by the European Union. Eighty projects which can be undertaken within a ten-year period have been proposed along with sixty-two small immediate impact ventures which can be carried out very quickly and with relatively little money. Proposals for a $20-40m plan to upgrade the island’s roads, a must before the serious development of tourism can be contemplated, was also prepared. All the parties involved hope that events in Afghanistan will stabilize and allow the implementation of Phase II sub projects to commence as soon as possible. Finalists in the BCB 2001 consultants awards included Mott MacDonald (Dubai Aluminum Condor Project), Waterman International (Hotel Tbiisi, Georgia), Turner and Town send (First silicon water fabrication plant, Kuching, Malaysia) and BBC Technology (Launch of the first TV station in Botswana).0 USA to Finance Road Project in Hudaidah US Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Hull, confirmed the news that the US government would fund a set of infrastructure projects in Yemen. During launching a new road project financed by the US government in Hudaidah, Hull said the project would reduce the time needed for a journey of Yemeni agricultural products to Saudi Arabia by three hours. Yemen-Turkish Committee to Hold a Meeting in February The Yemeni-Turkish committee is to hold in mid-February a meeting for enhancing fields of cooperation and trade exchange between the two countries. Egyptian Products Exhibition in Aden More than 35 Egyptian companies are currently participating in the Egyptian Exhibition in Aden. The exhibition will last until January 20, 2002. Montreal Fund to Finance Projects in Yemen The executive committee of Montreal Fund agreed to finance two projects in Yemen. The Yemeni government submitted the request through a UN agency. The funds will be used for funding an artificial freezing project at the cost of US$ 200 thousand. The fund also agreed to finance the extension project of the Ozone Unit at the General Authority for Environment Protection for the two upcoming years. |
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