It is well known that Spain and Yemen enjoy a very special relationship, which strengthened throughout the years, and reached its peak after the memorandum of understanding signed in December 1997. Apart from being a very close friend, Spain is also a contributer to the economic and democratic reforms in Yemen. This can be seen from the softloans and financial contributions worth millions of dollars it gave to Yemen.
Hatem Bamehriz of the Yemen Times filed the following interview with H.E. Mr. Jose Antonio Sabadell, the First Secretary and the Deputy Head of Missions at the Embassy of Spain in Riyadh.

Q: Would you please introduce yourself?
A: My name is Jose Antonio Sabadell. I am the First Secretary and the Deputy Head of Missions at the Embassy of Spain in Riyadh.

Q: Is this your first visit to Yemen?
A: No, I have visited Yemen before. Yemen is a beautiful country, and I like to visit it as often as I can. I feel at home when I am in Yemen. In addition to this, Yemen and Spain have a very special relationship.

Q: What is the purpose of this visit?
A: We do have visits made on regular basis to Yemen, by different members of the embassy, and that includes the ambassador, and other people responsible of different fields of bilateral relations. On one side we have commercial relations. Our commercial consular comes to Yemen every few months, as do I.

Q: How are Yemeni-Spanish relations?
A: I have already met some people I wanted to see, and I have spoken to different people in the government, other embassies, as well as commercial organizations in order to gain an idea of how the country is doing, and what its prospects are? I will be meeting more people in the next few days. I think our relations are positive, and we try to maintain and enhance it. As I always say, not having an embassy here forces us to work more to keep the relations on a very good level, as they are now. Mr. Alwan Shaibani, our Honorary Consul is doing a very good and important job.

Q: What are the fields of cooperation between Spain and Yemen?
A: We have more than one field, and it's a continuation of already excellent relations. On one hand from the commercial and economical point of view, I think there are an increasing number of Spanish companies that are taking an interest in Yemen. In this respect a soft loan of $30 million dollars has been approved, which will be designated to electricity, and $2 million dollars for feasability studies. From the point of view of tourism, there are an important number of Spanish tourists visiting Yemen every year. From a cultural point of view, we will try and make our offer of scholarships more available to Yemeni scholars, so they can benefit from it. There is also an invitation which has been extended by the minister of foreign affairs in Yemen to the minister of foreign affairs in Spain, which has been accepted, and we are trying to fix an appropriate date for this visit.

Q: How do Spanish tourists feel about Yemen?
A: Yemen has so much to offer, in almost every respect, such as landscape, culture, history, and the hospitality of Yemenis, and Spanish tourists appreciate that. I know many people, who had visited Yemen, and they all are extremely satisfied with their visit, and they are looking forward to coming back.

Q: Mr. Alwan Shaibani, would you like to add something?
The bilateral relationship between the two countries is not new. As a matter of fact Spain had provided a soft loan of $ 30 million to the Republican hospital in 1990. Unfortunately, the project did not materialize due to the Gulf war. In the last eight years Spain has provided a few shipments of medicine to the ministry of health, which were very much appreciated by the Yemeni government.

 

By: Ismail Al-Ghabiry
Yemen Times

It is hard to talk about investment in Yemen without talking about the recent rise in abduction (or kidnapping) cases and its subsequent impact on the tourism industry and foreign investment.
Abduction of foreign nationals began in 1992 by tribesman to exert pressure on the government, principally to make personal gain, to bargain for more development projects, or to draw the government's attention to a particular injustice done on them. Except for the latest Abyan incident, all abduction cases ended peacefully through negotiations. It has been suspected for some time that some foreign forces encourage tribesmen to carry out abduction incidents to undermine the country's development efforts, especially in the tourism and investment areas. The rate of abduction incidents increased in the past two years alarmingly. In parallel with these incidents following the 1994 war, many bomb attacks occurred from time to time, largely confined to the southern provinces. It was widely thought that secessionist groups were behind these incidents, which the security forces managed to engulf.

We all remember the sad Abyan incident in December 1998. Extremists in the province of Abyan abducted a large group of tourists. The hijackers identifies themselves as faithful Muslims fighting enemies of Islam, in particular, they meant westerners. They gave the government a list of demands and an ultimatum after which they threatened -as all kidnappers do- to kill the hostages. The government in a speedy reaction decided to crack down the hideout, and release the tourists. While most of the tourists were rescued, four were killed during the storming. After the kidnappers were arrested, they confessed that they belonged to a group lead by Abu Hamza, an Egyptian national who lives in London. A few days after the rescue operation, security organs captured a group of young British passport holders of Yemen and foreign origin and found in their possession explosives, advanced communication systems, arms, and designators. Police investigations revealed that they planned to carry out a number of terrorist attacks including the bombing of the British consulate in Aden. Abu Hamza threatened the Yemeni authorities of killing more foreign nationals in Yemen unless the hijackers are released. He also admitted giving permission to kill the Abyan case hostages. On the 22nd of January, the Yemeni government announced that the remainder of the Abyan kidnappers had been captured a well, and that one of them was the son of Abu Hamza himself.

The escalation of the terrorist incidents coincide with the tourist season which had began to flourish in the past few years, and further coincided with the intense efforts to attract foreign investment and with preparations to open the first phase of the Free Zone in Aden next month.
The sequence of events, their scale, foreign elements involved, sophisticated weapons used and timing constitute empirical evidence that the waves of terror are imported to Yemen. They also show that they are too well organized, and too well financed to be the product of local conspiracy alone.

People ask: "Why should a group of British passport holders who have high living standards in the UK come to Yemen to carry out such terrorist attacks? and against whom? British targets!" Indeed, why risk their lives? What are the motives and gains? What interests does the Egyptian Extremist Abu Hamza have in waging this terrorist war, and sending his own son to be a part of his campaign against a country like Yemen?
If Abu Hamza is a self proclaimed defender of Islam, and wants to fight non-Muslims, surely doing that would have been much easier for him where he is, and not in Yemen, or in any other country.
Islam, the religion of tolerance and peace, is being exploited by some individuals and groups to settle political scores. Islam is unfortunately being taken as a pretext to fight the very same principles of Islam.

In conclusion, there are many activities happening around us that need to be explained and dealt with. We must be ready to face any threat of disturbing our development in two very important sectors: tourism, and investment. For without them, we cannot even assume that we will be able to cope with the ever-changing world around us.

 

1. Material:
This is most important in the success of any industry. Here we are talking about raw material and other inputs.
2. Market:
When you produce something, you have to make sure you can sell it. A good market is the basic factor for success of any industry.
3. Management:
Many industries fail because of bad management. How you put your resources together and go about your activities is critical.
4. Money:
Whether it is adequate capital upon investing, or whether it is a proper cash flow, money is at the heart of any successful business.
5. Men:
Trained, dedicated and highly motivated staff are the key to success. We call it men, but of course, it includes those indispensable women.

Now that we know the five Ms, let us go to a specific project - iron ores in Rada'a. These ores await investors to go into their extraction and use. Yemen today imports a lot of pig iron. We could be a net exporter of pig iron to the international market.
In addition, we import a lot of iron in two types:

1. Cast iron which is used in industrial and constructional projects.
2- Steel, which has many uses.
Of course, steel products are imported into Yemen today in increasing volume.
Let me add here that no economy can really develop if it does not include heavy industries such as iron factories. The reason is that this fatory can then propduce materials that go into the production of many other products which have high value added.
It is in this light that I call on our entrepreneurs to take advantage of the raw material that is available in large quantities in our country. This can also serve as the base for other industries. The government must also support these endeavors because of the added employment value they generate.

 

By Riad al Khouri

The Jordanian interior minister's statement last year that the number of foreign workers in Jordan is equal to the number of Jordanians in the country's domestic work force should come as no surprise. Myriad Egyptians and others resident in Jordan, including some Yemenis, are simply doing the jobs Jordanians don't want, a labor market pattern familiar in the Arab world. Traditionally, these "guest workers" from Arab states have been welcome in Amman. The minister talked about Jordan's usual "openness" with regard to Arab visitors. He added however that Jordan would apply existing laws it had not fully enforced in the past to crack down on illegal workers. However, he insisted that Jordan will "stick to labor-exchange agreements" with other countries and "preserve the rights" of legal workers.

Fair enough: Jordanian rules in this regard are reasonable, and their application was also and continues to be tempered politically. Jordan has always been tolerant when it comes to issues which do not impinge directly on its national security, and I predict that this time was no exception: the kingdom's Arab guests -- and many of its foreign ones as well Ð are still largely be here months after the crisis broke. If on the other hand, members of the non-Jordanian Arab workforce of Amman started to riot to protest Jordan's relations with a non-Arab state such as, say, Ruritania, they would be expelled before you could say "normalization." The state's message to non-Jordanians is clear: stay away from political issues; otherwise, if you don't actually commit a felony, be our guest. Of course that was a lot easier to say when the economy was booming a decade or two ago, and unemployment was not an issue. The trick of course is to bring down unemployment; once that happens, a lot of the headaches regarding guest workers will disappear.

Now for the tough part: commenting on Jordanian unemployment and the guest worker issue, the prime minister said last year that "bold measures" to combat poverty and unemployment among Jordanians would be taken, and that work would begin to introduce a minimum wage. Alas, this tune is now being played again in Amman, and talk of a minimum wage has surfaced again during the past few days. If this happens in an unemployment crisis like Jordan's present one, look out. Such a measure would be disastrous if enforced -- though it would probably be unenforceable. Most foreigners in Jordan work for far lower wages than Jordanians, thus making businesses run. An argument can be made for Jordan to abandon its cheap-labor economic model, but this will mean massive restructuring, retraining, and retrenchment in the labor market, an elsewhere in the economy. Meanwhile the minimum wage idea is virtually impossible in a country wallowing in economic crisis. Once the economy picks up, through a combination of the right exogenous factors (comprehensive regional peace) and an internal attempt to improve the investment climate (to a considerable extent a function of the Jordanian government's deregulation of the economy) measures like a minimum wage will have a chance. Whether one should be imposed or not is another question: my point is that it would be impossible to apply under the present circumstances. Till annual GNP growth goes back to the seven percent or so which will allow new entrants to the labor market to be absorbed, a minimum wage applied to Jordan is a bit like prescribing sophisticated organic diets to somebody who is in a coma: he has to be revived first before he can get the fancy medicine. Until then, Jordan and other Arab countries should concentrate more on economic liberalization than on interference with markets, including those for labor.

I say "other Arab countries" because the simultaneous existence of unemployment and guest workers is also present elsewhere in the region. Take for example Saudi Arabia, where that country's interior minister recently said last year that the country was paying a "high price" for foreign workers and urged Saudis not to shun any job offered to them. The minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdelaziz, told a meeting of Saudi businessmen then that the kingdom was taking steps to ensure more Saudis take up jobs currently held by foreigners and said authorities may soon announce new measures to boost the employment of nationals. "We appreciate those who come to our country and work with us. But, of course, we pay a price for those who come from abroad and it is a very high price," the minister said. He expressed the hope that Saudi nationals would work in all fields and not shun any job, and explained that if Saudis turned down those jobs, non-Saudis must take them. Saudi Arabia is eager to replace many of its foreign workers Ð still including some Yemenis -- with its nationals. The government has told private firms employing more than twenty people to increase their Saudi staff by five percent a year. In my opinion, this would be as unenforceable as a Jordanian minimum wage under the present circumstances. With the Saudi economy still largely dependent on oil, and with petroleum prices stagnating badly, such measures may be difficult to take. Nevertheless, when it comes to expelling non-Saudis, Saudi Arabia has proved a lot tougher than Jordan, especially over the past few months.

The lesson which has yet to be learned by many government officials in the Arab world is that interference with markets is tricky and should be done rarely and very carefully. Minimum wages and statutory employment of nationals are steps which can be undertaken only under certain circumstances, preferably accompanied by other measures which would ease economic distortions instead of aggravating them. Otherwise, the rule must be to leave markets alone: whether in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere, the government's role in the economy has to shrink, and not to expand through more regulation.