Yemen needs 124.4 billion riyals per year to combat poverty, says report [Archives:2007/1109/Local News]
By: Yemen Times Staff
SANA'A, Dec. 3 ) A report on poverty assessment in Yemen, released on Sunday, revealed that Yemen has become the most impoverished Arab country, despite the decline of the poverty rate from about 40 percent in 1998 to 35 percent in 2006.
The Yemeni government, in collaboration with the World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), published the report, entitled, “Yemen Poverty Assessment Report.”
The report was based on a household budget survey conducted from April 2005 to March 2006. The report stated that the current population growth rate will cause the number of poor people to remain at around seven million, the same amount as in 2000. In addition, the report said poverty in Yemen's rural areas, where at least 75 percent of the population resides, did not decline as much as it did in urban areas. According to the report, the percentage of poor people declined from 42.4 percent in 1998 to 40.1 percent in 2005/06 in rural areas, but in urban areas poverty declined from 32.2 percent to 20.7 percent in the same period because the urban areas benefited greatly from oil-led growth.
“Oil -based growth does not benefit the poor, especially the rural poor. The oil sector does not contribute to employment among the rural poor population, being a highly industrialised sector demanding mostly imported skilled labor,” the report mentioned, noting that poverty increased by 10-15 percent in 12 governorates in central-northern, central-southern and eastern parts of Yemen. It revealed that the poorest areas in Yemen were located in Amran, where the poverty rate is estimated to be between 63 and 70 percent.
The assessment, which linked poverty with a decrease in the number of children enrolled in schools, as well as malnutrition and poor health among children whose families cannot afford vaccination or proper health care, said that the poverty gap index is 8.9 percent, implying a monthly poverty deficit per capita of about 1,431 riyals (about US$7). In other words, on average a poor person would need to get another 1,431 riyals a month to be lifted out of poverty.
“Providing all the poor in Yemen with enough to fill the gap between the actual spending of poor households and their incomes, thus lifting everyone out of poverty, would require only about 124.4 billion riyals per year (about 4 percent of GDP). The food poverty gap averages about 2,100 riyals for the poor, some 75 percent of the average consumption of the poor,” the report added.
In a statement, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Abdulkarim Al-Arhabi said “The National Poverty Reduction Strategy of 2003-2005 marked the first national initiative which reflected the government's commitment to the priorities of poverty reduction in its overall policies.” He admitted that the reduction of poverty in Yemen is still small when compared to the Millennium Development Goals that aim for the number of Yemenis living in poverty to be reduced by half by 2015. “However, the achievements in reducing poverty over the past seven years make a case for a rigorous review and renewal of joint efforts to combat this problem,” he added.
Flavia Pansieri, UNDP resident representative, said that in rural areas poverty rates more or less stagnated, which means development didn't affect these areas as it did urban areas. “Attention should be drawn to rural areas both by providing services and also making it possible for the people there to grasp opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty,” Pansieri stated, adding that it would be difficult to achieve the Millennium Development Goal in rural areas.
“For the first time, we have developed reliable poverty projections at the district level for Yemen,” said Thirumalai G. Srinivasan, a World Bank country economist for Yemen. “These detailed poverty projections will help direct development efforts more accurately in the future,” he added.
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