Bank governor reveals economic disaster’s causes in coalition-held areas

ADEN, June 18 (YPA) – The governor of the Aden branch of Yemen’s central bank, Ahmed al-Maabqi, loyal to the coalition revealed on Saturday the most important reasons behind the economic disaster in the southern and eastern provinces of Yemen.

Al-Maabqi confirmed in a TV interview that printing new banknotes of illegal currency by the coalition-affiliated government represented an economic setback, indicating that from 2016 until the end of 2021 that government was covering its expenses by printing the currency.

He commented on the Aden government’s procedures for printing the local currency, sarcastically, saying, “The process was taking place from the port to the cashier,” without an agreed financial policy.

“The government does not have a real budget until today,” Al-Maabqi explained, pointing out that what it announced was just unrealistic budgets and speculation.

The governor indicated that the Aden bank lost tax and customs resources that exceeded 700 billion riyals during the “UN-brokered truce,” in addition to the loss of about one billion dollars in oil exports, whose export have been stopped since September 2022, to June 2023.

“The work of the Bank and the Ministry of Finance in the government is not done through a real budget, but rather just “financial reinforcements,” Al-Maabqi stated.

During the past years, the coalition-affiliated government printed more than 4 trillion local currency that was printed in Russia, without monetary cover, which the Economic Committee in Sanaa considered as a destruction of the national economy, preventing currency circulation in the areas under its control as illegal.

AA