BY IMAD AL-SAQQAF
TAIZ BUREAU CHIEF
Imitation of products is a big threat in Yemen, says Mohammed Gawad Aghbary, trade manager-importing section in the middle Gast Trading company, comments,
Goods adulteration has spread in Yemen and markets are full of bad and misbranded products, he said.
Consequently, the customer is effected both positively and negatively by products that attempt to prove their presence and try to gain customer trust.
Yemeni industrial and trade authorities admit this problem of trade adulteration and misbranding in a letter from Ministry of Industry and Trade in Taiz addressed to the industry branch.
It points to the existence of commodities, electronic goods, building materials, spare parts and so on that have entered the country through normal inlets and through customs offices.
Some are Chinese, Indian, and Taiwanese goods, labeled as Japanese, German and Italian and other well-reputed countries in the industry for the purpose of cheating citizens.
The office of Industry and Trade in Taiz has been exerting efforts to fight the phenomenon, but faces many difficulties because there is not a clear law on punishing the guilty.
Engineer Gamal Mohammed Abdulrahman, the General Manager of Yemen Meteorology for Standardization & Specifications, Taiz office, defines commercial cheating as adding a variant substance to the natural substance of the commodity, or removing one of the crucial elements, substituting it with a second-rate element. So it hides the low quality of the product and make it appear as a high quality one.
They also add some cheaper material to the ingredients of the product for increasing its quantity. Cheating also done by changing the expiry date of products or reducing its weight and size.
One reason behind commercial cheating, he said is that "increasing demand of customers and variety of products and the technical development has greatly assisted to the spreading of the cheating phenomenon in many developing countries whose markets are victims of this phenomenon. Individuals' low incomes and lack of awareness by the customers in these countries have also helped the spread of commercial adulteration. Added to that is the weakness of control measures."
Misbranding undoubtedly has very serious damages on the consumer and the original product.

For example, one of the traders has recently introduced a fake drink for the famous energy drink (Shark) with the same size and color but with another name exploiting customers' high demand for the original one.
Abdullah Mohammed Fakeera, the General Manager of the Middle East for Trade and exclusive agent for the energy drink Shark confirmed that there are a lot of reasons for misbranding, but the main ones are the product's popularity and quality.
However, Mr Fakeera pointed out that the customer has to differentiate between the original and the fake by taking into consideration: agent slogan; shape (kind of the tin can, the color); and quality (taste and smell).
He concluded the damage of faking includes sales depression for the real product and affecting other products of the company.
In addition, the customer will not be able to recognize between the genuine and imitated product that definitely will affect his health.
He also confirmed that the faking phenomenon can be defeated by building awareness with the risks of the forged products and trial of everyone who forges original trademarks.
Dr. Abdu Ali, the manager of quality in the Yemeni Company for Industry and Trade, confirmed local products are often of higher quality than the imported which most of them are of low quality and not meeting specifications.
Dr. Ali also confirmed that what helps spreading the misbranding is absence of control on the market that is full with such commodities. Inspection requires qualified people.
Closing of smuggling outlets and providing modern laboratories to examine imported products are some of the most effective measures to be taken for fighting such a dangerous phenomenon.
The efforts exerted by the standardization and specifications authority in Yemen confirm its serious endeavor for adopting a Yemeni standard specification.
Engineer Abdulrahman says to fight smuggling and expired goods and commercial adulteration, we have to activate the laws, and spread awareness among consumers.
In most cases, these products were not passed through any quality checks and it's doubtful whether it is fit for human consumption. Therefore, consumption of such products for a long time may create serious health problems.
Most of the consumers, especially people in the rural areas are not aware about the duplication, or they may not be able to recognize it as these products almost look like the original one.
Those who import/distribute duplicate products will always be thinking how they can utilize properly the popularity of the original products to make easy money and are not really bothered about the quality and bad effects of such products.
Moreover, since these duplicate products are entirely different in all respects compared to the originals, it can create a bad impression about the efficacy of the original products.
These unscrupulous traders/businessmen must know the effort, time and money spent to introduce, establish and maintain the position of a product/brand in the market, which they spoil in few months.
This tendency of imitating the products has recently increased as certain people always think to make easy money in a short span of time. In this process, they do not think about their brothers, sisters and children who are going to suffer by consuming this kind of products or what damage they do in the business sector.
They must realize that by involving such activities they are not only against the entire business ethics, but also spoiling the image of our country in front of other nations.
There is no hard and fast rule in our country to stop such unethical business practice unlike our neighboring countries. It is our strong suggestion that it is the time our government has to think of making suitable legislation in order to fight such duplicate products.
People who are involved in such activities should be identified and punished severely to save the interest of business community and the common people of this country.

BY YEMEN TIMES STAFF
A group of economic dossiers have been introduced to Yemen for 2003. The major ones are the work for mobilizing potentials and assistance to begin implementation of a national strategy for fighting poverty, taking further steps to complete on privatization, development of exports, and working for establishing a stock-exchange market with the aim of attracting investments and activating the tourist sector.
The poverty fighting file acquires the priority for the aggravation of its phenomena on poor and needy families and adopts a strategy supported by donor countries which includes the tackling of relevant areas:
The first is to limit the problem of unemployment, creating job opportunities and broaden the net of social safety . The second is to improve services of health sector.
The third is to solve the problem of water by building dams and barriers and rationalize the consumption of subterranean waters.
The fourth is to improve and develop education services in the elementary stage and the eradication of adult illiteracy.
The fifth is organizing reproductive health and reduce the rate of population growth.
The sixth is the establishment of technical and engineering institutes and centers for training labor on professional skills.
Scoring new growth rates in these fields is considered a test for the government before the donors who have praised the strategy concerning poverty and contributed to financing plans for social development at Paris Conference that granted Yemen $ 2.3 billion to maintain its economic reforms and combating poverty.
The government is in 2003 facing the task of finishing implementation of its program of privatizing the establishments that constitute a burden on the state general budget and to work on treating the negative results on labor at the establishments offered for sale.
Part of this program is the responsibility for evaluating what has been privatized of establishments that in 2002 included selling and liquidation of government ownership of establishments such as: overland transportation establishment, Yemeni company for drugs industry, grains establishment for external trade and the industrial complex.
On instructions of the World Bank, Yemen, through carrying out the privatization program,would be able to reduce deficit of the general budget and develop productive performance of the state establishments offered for selling and render their ownership to the private sector. The private sector would in turn work for modernizing ways of administration and machinery of factories and productive companies. It would have to solve the problem of wages of workers at those installations. The private sector should also offer social and health security for the workers and creation of new job opportunities for the unemployed.
The government has a priority in the development of external exports in the year 2003 to achieve the following benefits:
- obtaining secured revenues from non-inflationary sources,
-increasing industrial, agricultural and animal production,
-entering in trade partnership with foreign markets, especially the neighboring countries,
-finding sources for income outside oil exports which are exposed to fluctuation of oil prices in world markets.
Government sources see that the developing of exports needs attraction of domestic, Arab and foreign capitals for developing productive installations and exploitation of local resources to increase production surplus with the aim of dealing with foreign markets.
For this reason the government would, according to the investment law, offer facilities to investors in productive sectors for encouraging exports and realizing financial proceeds. But attracting capitals for investment in these sectors needs the establishment of a stock-exchange market giving them confidence in using their money and transferring their profits via a banking market.
So the government faces the task of completing its efforts for inaugurating the stock market this year to guarantee influx of capitals for investment in available opportunities in Yemen.
The success of the government in implementing these priorities would finish the most important economic files that would lead to prosperity of the society, attract capitals and improve economic performance in the country.

The Road Ahead
BY RAIDAN A. AL-SAQQAF
r_saqqaf@hotmail.com
A banker is one who accepts deposits for the purpose of lending and investments in order to make a good utilization of money collected and deposited and hence take part in the economic development of the nation.
However, the key factor for success in banking is collecting and accumulating money from the public cheaply and lending it out at a price as high as possible with the least risk involved in order to keep the cost of capital to the bank to a minimum and the return to a maximum.
Yet, banking appears to be a fully complicated system requiring immense efforts to understand and deal with. In a sense this is true, but still; for a banker to encourage more people to take loans, he has to shift his orientation from the security being offered and how much profits the bank is going to make, to the purpose of the loan; how will giving this loan help in the economic development of the individual and the nation?
Another point is that only those who have and are willing to offer securities to the bank can get the loan, and in turn utilize this money in further investment and so on. In other words those who are rich enough to offer suitable securities can avail of the credit facilities of the bank while other people can't. And as a result, the rich get richer while others don't even if they have the ideas, qualifications and experience.
In addition to that, in the last couple of decades there hasn't been even growth in our urban and rural areas. For example, the number of business transactions in the urban areas have increased at a much higher rate than those in the rural areas. How can we develop our country if we only focus on the urban and neglect the rural areas where at least 60% of our population live?
Therefore, it is crucial that we improve our economic situation through providing credit to those who need it in order to start new small-scale businesses and shift the focus from giving credit to big industries and those who can offer big securities to small scale businesses which have a good purpose and are likely to succeed even though they can't offer much of a security.
That, and that only will help create more income for the business, more employment and business opportunities, and help the economic revival and development of our country. This is the role banking should play in our economic development.

Remember: Bankers can help economic revival through shifting focus to the purpose of the loan rather than the securities offered, to motivate those with good business ideas to ask for loans and start new small businesses. This in turn will help improve the standard of living and provide employment.