Continuous Bleeding of National Economy Under US-Saudi Siege
YemenExtra
Y.A
Under the US-Saudi siege, the national economy has suffered heavy losses, as the aggression put monetary and fiscal policy at the top of the economic war objectives. Assistant Undersecretary for Foreign Banking Operations and Research at the Central Bank, Sami Al-Siaghi, confirms in an interview with Almasirah that the last “statistic for 2018 estimated the losses of the national economy due to the siege and aggression between $ 66 billion.” In the details of the US-Saudi siege and aggression consequences, the country’s monetary policy faced several challenges from the beginning. 80% of the foreign reserves were decreased and has lost its investment returns and anti-erosion revenues.
In this context, the Central Bank Deputy explains that “Yemen’s foreign exchange reserves declined from 3 billion seven hundred and sixty-seven million to less than one billion dollars. The foreign reserves of Yemen have lost due to the siege, their investment returns, which is estimated at eighty million dollars. In addition it lost anti-corrosion revenues, which are revenues of oil and gas sales, the loss is estimated at six billion dollars annually. He also pointed out that Yemen ‘s foreign exchange reserves erode due to the policy of aggression, which has focused since March 2015 on putting the oil and gas wealth under the siege, revealing a direct US involvement that enabled the government of traitors and mercenaries to steal huge amounts of these reserves.Al-Siaghi added that the US has facilitated the mercenaries’ disposal of part of Yemen’s foreign exchange reserves and held responsible to forfeit these funds owned by the Yemeni people.”
Deputy Central Bank of Yemen confirms that the previous targeting paths of the national economy and “illegal and non-economic printing by mercenaries for more than one trillion and four hundred billion riyals, were the most important reasons for the high exchange rates and the deterioration of the national currency, losing half of its value.”
“In addition, the countries of aggression have targeted remittances of Yemeni expatriates in various ways as they are the only tributary of foreign exchange while the mercenaries are controlling oil and gas revenues.” “The aggression and siege countries imposed new and unfair charges on Yemeni expatriates to limit foreign transfers to Yemen and imposed other restrictions that limited the Banking transactions of the Central Bank in dollars with foreign banks,” he said.
The years of the siege have had a double negative impact on living life. The average per capita income has declined, the conditions of domestic production have deteriorated and the national economy has lost 56% of its production capacity, according to the Ministry of Public Finance.
In this context, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance for the planning sector Ahmed Hajar said for Almasirah Net that “real GDP fell by 47% according to 2018 data and compared with 2014. In addition, in the year 2014 it fell 10% from 2013, which confirms according to economic expert Hajar that “the economic war had preceded the military aggression and started in the year 2014.”
With the escalation of the siege policy, the Inflation rate have risen in an unprecedented manner, according to the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance from “an average of 10% in 2014 before the aggression to 21% in 2018.”
Hajar points out that these indicators are much more than doubling, confirming that the “real average per capita income decline by about 53%”, meaning that the per capita income in 2018 is not equal to the half compared to the pre-aggression period. Adding that what has doubled the problem is the burglary on the salaries of state employees by mercenaries and aggression. All these reasons have risen “The unemployment rate from 30% of the total population in 2014 to reach 60% in 2018,” said the Finance Ministry undersecretary. “The poverty rate due to the blockade and the total aggression on Yemen has risen from 49% of the population below a higher poverty line to an unacceptable level,” he said.
In light of the almost total control of mercenaries on the important revenues of the state, the aggression and the siege have brought disaster to the national economy. The internal public debt recorded indicators that suggest a catastrophe. According to economists, internal public debt indicators have risen above international risk levels. “Internal public debt indicators exceeded revenues, representing 110% of the total public revenues of the state. This means that, according to economists, internal public debt indicators have registered an increase that exceeded risk rates according to international standards,” Al-Siagi said.“This is one of the most serious repercussions of the blockade and aggression on Yemen,” he said, pointing out that “the ratio of total public debt represents 127% of the gross national product.”
The national economy was subjected to a horrific massacre so to speak, a massacre that its objectives were to reach the systematic starvation of the Yemeni people and throw them into the circles of extreme poverty and the complete inability to provide basic needs of food commodities and services in many cases, causing various diseases and malnutrition.
In the context of what the enemy does on its economic war, Ahmed Hajar asserts that “the continuation of the siege on Yemen aims to put the country in front of a socio-political economic dilemma not in the short term but in the medium and long term so that it cannot bring about an economic recovery cycle. Amid the congestion of the negative effects of the blockade, the most important component of human, economic and social development can be relied upon on human capital, according to observers and specialists.
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