New office opening in Sana’a Germany gives more help to private sector [Archives:2004/717/Business & Economy]
Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
With the opening an office for the German Bank for Construction in Sana'a, Yemen and Germany have moved to their next stage of cooperation.
This has come in coincidence with doubling the financial allotments the German government is offering to the Yemeni government. The financial appropriation has been raised from 12 million Euros during the past two years to 24 million Euros in 2002 and 36 million Euros in 2003.
During the Yemeni-German consultative meetings this year the Germans added a fourth area for cooperation between the two countries, namely helping the private sector through creating job opportunities in addition to supporting projects of local development.
The two sides agreed on enhancement of the existing cooperation in water, sewage, health, basic education, and economic development.
Negotiations are annually held between Yemen and Germany to discuss issues of cooperation. Last year's meetings resulted agreement on granting Yemen 22 million Euros as financial cooperation and 14 million Euros as technical cooperation.
A number of German organisations offer assistance and expertise to Yemen via the German organisation for volunteers “DED”, the organisation for rehabilitation and development of abilities, the center for international development and migration for supporting the private sector, the SES organisation of delegating German expertise from retired specialists, and the federal institute for geological sciences and natural resources.
The volume of development assistance offered to Yemen since 1969 amounts to 787 million Euros, distributed as 60% in financial cooperation and 40% as technical cooperation for funding technical consultations and expertise.
In 2001, Germany had chosen Yemen among four developing countries to help cut rates of poverty in half by the year 2015. This selection allows Yemen to get additional support for funding the strategy of combating poverty, and accordingly in 2003 Yemen got additional sums amounting to 4 million Euros, in addition to an increase of $600,000 Euros for the German volunteers organisation to enhance its developmental activities in Yemen.
Geographically, the German support during the past years was focused on areas of Ibb ad Abyan, while an agreement was signed for expanding the area of cooperation to cover 17 districts in various parts of the country.
There is a German trend towards supporting new fields in the next stage, especially in offering loan facilities to evolve small industries and alleviation of poverty and promotion for cultural heritage.
Thus Germany is considered among the most important partners of development for Yemen, and relations between the two sides relations are characterised by political respect at all levels.
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