Aden Businessmen Complain [Archives:1998/05/Local News]

A number of merchants and businessmen in Aden have lodged a complaint at the Aden Chamber of Commerce regarding the long-winded bureaucratic procedures of issuing and renewing trade registers. They indicated that the Ministry of Trade and Supply branch in Aden is ‘trying to monopolize trading activities in the governorate.’
According to Eng. Badr Mohammed Ba-Salma, the Director-General of the Aden Chamber of Commerce, a large number of merchants are complaining of the new and strange procedures for opening new trade registers or renewing their existing ones. One of the new conditions stipulates the a trade register must remain open for at least 10 years. ‘This is quite impractical, considering that all commercial property leases do not extend beyond two years,’ wrote the merchants in their complaints. ‘Commercial enterprises my make profit or loss, so it is quite feasible that the enterprise is changed, which requires changing the trade register.’ They demanded an end to ‘these crippling procedures.’
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