Yemen Prime Minister calls for international help with debt relief

Maeen Saeed tells London conference war in Ukraine has badly hit food imports, compounding misery caused by conflict in the country

Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Saeed told the conference that his country has 'a lot of debt and 30 million people to feed'. Chatham House

Yemen's Prime Minister has asked for international support to slash the country's debt burden, saying this would create conditions that would boost an emerging peace process.

“We need some patience from the international funds,” Maeen Saeed told the Chatham House think tank's London conference 2023.

“We are losing capacity, we are losing education, we are losing universities – it is hard for me as Prime Minister to resolve this. I cannot manage without some national resources. The situation is not made by me but provided to me.

“The financial issues play into every aspect. We have a lot of debt and 30 million people to feed.”

Yemen has been in conflict since Iran-backed Houthi rebels took the capital Sanaa in 2014. A Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the internationally recognised government the following year.

The Covid-19 pandemic delivered a further blow to the country.

But Mr Saeed told the Chatham House gathering that worse followed when the Ukraine war erupted in February 2022, badly affecting the country's food supply.

“The Russian war on Ukraine was one of the big shocks because 90 per cent of our food is imported and 50 per cent came from Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

“We don't have the fiscal ability to deal with the crisis. Nobody wants to deal with us, the banking system or the parallel trade sector – everything had to be paid for in cash.

The government has seen public spending reduced by pressures of an 80 per cent deficit in its state budget.

Officials are holding direct talks with the World Bank and the Arab Monetary Fund as sources of direct aid infusions.

The humanitarian situation still has to be dealt with, and Mr Saeed said state institutions should not be written off.

“The private sector is resilient and helped keep us in the state going at this time,” he said.

“That's why we say we don’t want the humanitarian economy to seize the private economy.”

Although the capital Sanaa is controlled by the Houthis, Mr Saeed highlighted co-operation with its banking system to prop up the currency as a solid foundation for a political process.

He asked: “We have a future of peace but where has the support we need gone?

“We need that support now more than any time ever until we can reach some accommodation in a political process.”

A World Bank report in April forecast a recession and 16.8 per cent inflation this year.

Asked about the post-Second World War Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and any parallels with present-day Yemen, Mr Saeed returned to his pleas on debt relief.

“Some groups will always use collapse and the economic situation and chaos to destroy power-sharing,” he said.

“We need to survive until we reach a Marshall Plan, but militia and radicals grow in our conditions. Wars always bring the worst.”

The UN estimated that by the start of 2022, the conflict in Yemen had caused more than 377,000 deaths – with 60 per cent of this figure a result of hunger, unsafe water and lack of health care.

More than two-thirds of the population live in poverty, according to the UN, including government employees in Houthi-controlled areas, who have not been paid in years.

UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said “economic warfare” between the opposing parties has compounded problems.