A major part of Yemen’s economyAgriculture and development [Archives:2003/628/Business & Economy]

By Abdulaziz M.Abdullah
Aden
The state pays increasing attention to the economic development in Yemen with all its sectors such as industrial, medical and tourism. At the same time, our country is one of those enjoying wide areas of land suitable for farming many products like cotton, tomato, potato, grapes, coffee, onion, and other farm products.
But while this is true, it is also true that agriculture needs water, and since Yemen depends only on underground water resulting from rain and floods, in its water supplies and irrigation, there is an evident problem in the agricultural sector as a whole.
Our country is considered of the countries suffering from weak water resources, so the solution here would be to activate projects and programs that would serve to maintain water and to organize water consumption in a way that aids agricultural development.
Year 2000 census indicate that 14.2% of the local production comes from agriculture, especially vegetables, coffee, cotton and other products that formed around 32% of the Yemeni non-oil exports in 2000.
The same statistics show that during year 2000, Fresh bananas worth 547,000 riyals, raw cotton worth 308,000 riyals, processed cotton worth 256,000 riyals, fresh vegetables worth 253,000 riyals, and seed fruits worth 234,000 riyals, red chilies worth 215,000 riyals, coffee shells worth 213,000 riyals, onion worth 174,000 riyals, and fresh mango and fresh guava worth 162,000 riyals was exported during the year.
In spite of the mentioned figures, it is important to know that there are many products that need attention and care as they pose as a vital source of income of the national economy. Moreover attention has to be directed to those goods in a way that enables them to compete with other products in the regional markets.
For example, the fruit and vegetable exports to KSA reached 650 thousand ton during 2000 out of which 35 ton was fresh vegetables from which dry onions took a 42.5%, ladyfingers 23% and hot chilies 18.9% then the rest of the products less than 6%.
As for fruits, around 33 tons, out of which 77% was banana, and mango of 12% then the other kinds of less than 4.5% all together.
Considering all this, it has become important to pay attention to the agricultural sector, in order to increase these products and exports. A number of incentives could be set for this such as :
– Carrying out researches and detailed studies about the external market and the mechanisms of marketing there.
– Founding and supporting an infrastructure for production in Yemen and to enable to compete with international products.

In addition is the fact that farming as such is a rich employment field and many jobs could be created there. We can make use of the other countries experiences in this field such as Tunisia which made use of its heavy production of tomato, and made varieties and different concentrations of the tomato products to expert to France and other countries. Also cotton, where it used the industrial agricultural relations and used a part of cotton in the national manufacturing such as shirts and towels and underwear.
There is a demand in the market and there are resources and manpower the only thing is how to put all the parameters together and make the equation work so that benefit reaches all.
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