Symposium on Combating Poverty A Yemeni Strategy for Easing Poverty within the 5-year plan 2001-2005 [Archives:2001/08/Business & Economy]

Mahyoob Al-Kamali 
A symposium has recently been organized by the ministry of Planning and Development in cooperation with the World Bank to discuss the Yemeni government policy aimed at drawing up a strategy and policies for mitigating poverty. 
Minister of planning and development Ahmed Mohammed Soufan has presented the outlines of the national strategy on easing poverty in Yemen scheduled to be implemented during the second five-year plan 2001-2005. The strategy has defined causes of poverty in Yemen, embodied mainly in population distribution, qualitative imbalance in proportion of males and female, decrease of women’s role in the economic process, the water crisis, the spread of qat tree cultivation and its impact on agricultural products, in addition to the weakness of health, education services and vocational and technical training. 
Economic studies have confirmed that the percentage of Yemeni families under the poverty line has reached 27%. As for percentage of the population below the poverty line, it has reached one million , or 5.3%. The unemployment indicators, according to 1999 figures, have amounted to 35% out of the labor force, while males occupied 82% and female 18%. As far as illiteracy is concerned there are one million people above ten-years of age who do not know reading and writing. The educational figures, according to 1999 figures, are 84% in the primary stage, 8% secondary stage, 6% higher education and 2% technical education and training. 
Concerning durable means of living for the same year, 7% of families possess farms for breeding livestock, 3% of families own houses for lease and 12% of families possess real estate for lease. 
The strategy says that health services in the countryside are available to around 30% of the population, 80% of those in urban areas, while no more than 3% can benefit from a sewage system and 17% get electricity services. With regard to telephone lines in rural areas they amount to nil, and the same percentage is applicable to paved road networks. 
Figures also point out that there is a deficiency in population distribution as a result of the existence of 11,000 population groupings in spacious geographic areas and high population growth reaching 3.5%, in addition to limited arable lands whose proportion reaches 2,9% . The Yemeni individual share is 2% of the world average. 
Regarding the water crisis, only 44% of Yemenis get healthy pure water. The national strategy on combating poverty concentrates on the improvement of the infrastructure, encouragement of investment, decreasing population growth rate, rationalization of water consumption and combating desertification. 

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