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http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/05/yemens_unresolved_economi
c_crisis> Yemen's unresolved economic crisis
Posted By Peter Salisbury
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091022_meta_block.gifFriday, April 6,
2012 - 11:09 AM
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091022_meta_block.gif
In late 2011, the British government sent one of its top humanitarian
advisors to Yemen after a year of protests, bloody crackdowns, and
inter-elite fighting. Drawing on his experience from a career spanning three
decades, the advisor reported back that Yemen faced the most complex set of
circumstances he had ever seen.
Some of the key issues at the time, such as fighting between elite military
and tribal factions in the capital of Sanaa and north Yemen's second largest
city, Taiz, have since eased off. But others, including rising violence
between Shiite Houthi tribesmen, government forces, and Sunni Salafists in
the northern Saada province and the rise of Ansar al-Sharia -- the local al
Qaeda affiliate -- in the south, are still causing mass displacement on a
daily basis.
Refugees and economic migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia continue to pour
into the country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
registered more than 100,000 new arrivals in 2011 alone. Hunger among the
Yemeni poor has reached a crisis point with about 5 million going hungry so
regularly that it is damaging their health. Some 5 million more only just
get enough to eat according to the World Food Programme.
Meanwhile, Yemen's economy, fragile and sclerotic at best, effectively
ground to a halt in 2011. A series of explosions damaged a major oil
pipeline which is the source of most of the country's fuel. The ensuing
shortage of diesel fuel, used to transport goods across the country and to
pump most of the country's water, led to a sharp increase in the price of
food and water. The government was forced to import fuel and hemorrhaged
foreign currency reserves normally used to settle the hefty import bill that
covers most of the wheat and rice eaten in the country.
In the end, Saudi Arabia stepped in with donations of oil and fuel products
to keep the economy going. However, even with Saudi support, foreign
currency holdings at the Central Bank of Yemen dipped 25 percent, from $5.7
billion at the end of 2010 to $4.3 billion in December 2011. Riyadh is
currently committed to supplying Yemen's fuel needs until May.
Unemployment was also exacerbated by the crisis. Joblessness was above 40
percent on average and as high as 70 percent among people under 25 years old
in 2010. It climbed as factories closed, farmers struggled to irrigate their
crops, and fuel shortages and near-constant blackouts made all but the
simplest economic activities nearly impossible. By some accounts, almost
two-thirds of Yemenis were out of work by the end of 2011.
"There is already a humanitarian crisis in Yemen," the policy chief of one
European aid agency retorted sharply when asked if the country is moving
toward crisis. The problem, she said, is that Yemen is suffering multiple,
interconnected crises rather than having one easily identifiable problem.
It does not require a stretch of the imagination to believe that these
factors -- mass displacement, hunger, a weak rentier economy in free-fall,
and rising unemployment -- could mean a grim fate for the 10 million-plus
people currently living in poverty in Yemen.
Aid agencies are gearing up for a major humanitarian relief program, and the
United Nations has doubled its annual appeal to donors for Yemen for the
coming year to $446 million (of which only about 20 percent has been
raised). With a bit of luck, aid agencies will be able to avert a hunger
crisis of the scale seen in Africa in 2011, and at least allow Yemen's
poorest people to hold out for a year or two more. However, this will still
leave unsolved the far bigger challenge of lifting people out of poverty and
building a diversified, sustainable economy during a period of huge
political change.
The transitional unity government that has been in place in Sanaa since
December cannot realistically be expected to do this on its own. Composed of
members of the General People's Congress (GPC), a party still led by former
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the opposition coalition Joint Meeting
Parties (JMP), it has already proven to be somewhat dysfunctional. One new
minister described with incredulity the decision of most GPC cabinet members
to boycott a meeting in mid-March after tit-for-tat speeches given by Saleh
and Mohamed Basindwah, the JMP-affiliated prime minister. In the end, he
said, President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi had to call the ringleader of the
GPC faction and effectively threaten to fire the entire cabinet if they did
not work with one another.
Basindwah has come under considerable criticism from technocrats who see him
as a weak administrator. One official who worked with him said, "He is like
your grandpa, soft and cuddly...He is a really nice guy but you wouldn't
want your grandpa running a country." However, a senior diplomat cautioned
that a different consensus candidate would be hard to find.
Even if they were able to work alongside one another, the new ministers
would have to cope with the same overstaffed, undertrained bureaucracy that
has presided over decades of poor socioeconomic development in Yemen. "There
are new ministers in place, but everything else is the same," said the
official, adding that the decision of the previous administration to add
60,000 new civil service jobs in 2011 would only serve to complicate things.
"It is hard work just finding things for people to do," he said. "Most
government departments are now crowded with too many people of the wrong
caliber."
Another official quietly added that, of the small number of skilled
technocrats in government before the political crisis of 2011, a number have
now moved on to the private sector or international institutions. "There are
even less good people around than before," he said. "And the number is
shrinking fast."
One of the first significant tasks for the government was to prepare a
budget which addressed concerns about a growing fiscal deficit, which it
simply cannot fund, while preparing the ground for economic development. In
talks with international institutions like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, and with international donors in early 2012,
the government had agreed in principle to limit the budget deficit for the
year to about $2 billion, and in return asked for direct support to fund the
gap.
In late March, the Yemeni national assembly was presented with a budget
which projected the year's revenue at 2.1 trillion Yemeni Rial (YER) and
spending at about 2.7 trillion YER, compared to spending in 2011 of 1.8
trillion YER. That meant a projected budget deficit of 600 billion YER, or
$2.6 billion, some 50 percent higher than even officials in the ministry of
finance had expected. Most of the budget, about 80 percent, is directed
toward current spending -- paying for salaries, bills, and other day-to-day
expenses. Of that amount, 860 billion YER alone, a third of the overall
budget, will be used to pay wages while a similar amount will be used to
fund fuel subsidies.
This is not an encouraging sign according to an economist at one prominent
international institution. Another, similarly-placed economist saw the
budget as an attempt on the government's part to start a bargaining process
with donors over budget support. Never mind, the first economist said, the
Yemeni budget rarely bears much resemblance to actual patterns of spending
over a given year. The big issue, both agreed, will be bridging the deficit
gap. Spending of any kind will be a bonus, said the second economist.
Cabinet ministers have spent considerable amounts of time meeting their Gulf
counterparts in the hope of raising cash according to sources connected with
government business. "They have been headed off to the Gulf, cap in hand,
with no real plans," said one well-placed source. "The Gulfies are trying to
get them to explain what the money is going to be spent on, so there is a
bit of a disconnect."
Some economic planning is happening. The ministries of planning and finance
are working with the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations, and
the Islamic Development Bank on a post-crisis assessment of the economy and
a rapid recovery plan. The findings of the assessment were originally due to
be unveiled at an April meeting of the international "Friends of Yemen"
group as part of an effort to get donors interested in the government's
plans. The meeting has now been pushed back to May. A report from the World
Food Programme on food security due in late April, which aid workers say
will be "shocking," could also loosen up a few wallets.
Even if donors do start putting money aside for big projects in Yemen, there
is considerable debate over how quickly the impact will be felt by Yemenis
on the street. If the government gets funding for its budget and aid
agencies start work, the inflow of cash and demand for services should give
the economy something of a shot in the arm, but one which is only likely to
be felt in the big cities. Unemployed agricultural workers in Hodeidah don't
get much benefit from expensive cups of coffee or cab rides in Sanaa.
The really big projects which could get the economy moving range from power
stations and roads to huge real estate developments. But these kinds of
schemes take a long time to get from the planning stage to a point when they
are creating jobs on the ground. Given that the first donor meeting to
discuss these kinds of projects isn't until July, and that Yemen is hardly
the easiest place in the world to do business, it is conceivable that most
initiatives won't even have reached the construction phase by the end of the
two year transition period.
If things don't get moving soon, another debilitating factor could throw
economic development even further off track. From policymakers to farmers by
way of the Change Square protest encampment in Sanaa, Yemenis are generally
giving Hadi and the Basindwah government two or three months to show they
have made genuine progress before they start getting fed up again. That
would make things just a little bit more complicated.
Peter Salisbury is an independent journalist and analyst.
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Received on Fri Apr 06 2012 - 08:57:46 EDT
