Al-Tajammu [Archives:2003/693/Press Review]

8 Dec. 2003.

Main headlines:
– Saleh's advice to Saddam impedes a Kuwaiti agreement with Yemen
– President forms opposition delegation to Beirut symposium on reforming the Arab League
– Aden public hospital rehabilitated
– Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies takes part in a regional conference in Cairo and another in Sana'a.
Columnist Ahmed Said al-Dahhi says the eye-catching and worrying thing is that the program of economic reform has stayed too long and exceeded the boundaries designed for it. The Yemeni economic reform came in response to a need for dealing with an unexpected economic crisis hit the national economy at moment of a political inattentiveness and under a backward administrative mentality and under a climate of corruption. Apart from the extent of the program's success or failure, almost a decade has elapsed since it has been inaugurated and its supposed age has ended in 2001. The program's three stages have also been finished and it is no longer useful economically.
It is scandalous and shameful to keep the country's economy and its social conditions governed by an impact of an economic crisis took place ten years ago and subject to a short-term and outdated economic reform program. The experiment has proved its failure in more than one aspect at a time when course of the following events and consequences of international developments and tempests of globalization demand facing them and benefiting from them as well as encircling their negative impact. To continue drawing up the system of strategies and plans of development in the light of the standing program of economic reform and subjecting them to precepts and goals of such a cracked program places restraints on efficiency of planning and determinants of investment and development policies.
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