Aden Emulsion and Paint Company a Success Story for Yemeni Economic Market [Archives:1999/44/Business & Economy]
November 1 1999
Redhwan Al-Saqqaf,Yemen Times Aden Bureau Chief has conducted the following interview with Mr. Salem Mohammed Balfakeeh, General Manager of the company.
Q: Could you please give us some information about the company?
A: Yes, the company works under the license of Denmark Hempel Company. It is one of the great international companies. It occupies the eight position amongst international paints companies. The production is being observed by international experiences. The factory gets good advantage from its products.
Q: What are the activities of the company?
A: The company produces different categories of paints as sea and industrial paints. In other words, it produces more than a hundred categories. The company can produce such categories according to the demand of the clients.
Q: Do you export your products?
A: Yes, we try to export some of our products, but we have given the priority to the local market.
Q: How do you evaluate local markets?
A: At present Yemeni markets are good as well as bad because of the economic stagnancy. We hope to the economic condition would change to enable us to improve our transaction in the local markets.
Q: What is your point of view about privatization?
A: Privatization gives freedom to administration to companies. It encourage the private sector to practice its work freely.
Q: What it the volume of employment in the company?
A: There are 80 employees, which means that we depend upon Yemeni employment 100 %.
Q: How do you evaluate investment in Yemen?
A: I think that the foreign investor will face problems. So, it needs a lot of time to get over our internal problems.
Q: What are these problems?
A: First, we pay 15 % of our manufactured materials, and 5 % of the imported materials as taxes. In addition to this, we pay taxes before we sell our goods, and we also pay 35 % as income taxes. This means that we pay 80 % of the totality of products. This affects our production in particular and the future of Yemeni products in general. We call upon the government to look to this matter.
Q: What is the effect of the smuggling material on your products?
A: I think that there is no need to smuggle any industrial material because the taxes will not cost more than the cost of smuggling. We , in the factory of paints raised complains to the authorities, but did not receive any response up to this moment.
Q: What are the future plans of your company?
A: There are a lot of plans, but there must be a support for that. It means that the country should take serious steps to protect national industries. For instance I myself prefer to found a factory in one of the Yemeni islands and pay 5 % of taxes.
Q: What are the problems that you face?
A: Taxes is the big problem that we suffer from. We can solve other problems. There is also another problem which is the problem of false checks. This means that we face long hassles during the trading process.
Q: What are the solutions for this problem?
A: The first thing that we have to do is to find solutions for the problem of taxes. The other thing is to protect national industries and investment in the country. Industry in our country is deteriorating because there are many employees who are out of work. So, we have to exploit the Yemeni laborers. If we look at the industrialised countries, we find that they improve their industries through exploiting national workers. We, in Yemen have to encourage the national industries.
Q: Any last words ?
A: I call upon the government to pay attention to the national industries and work to develop new technologies in order to achieve good results in the field of industry. They have to encourage industrial investment in the country.
Finally, I would like to thank Yemen Times for its interest in the industry field.
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