WB Funds the Civil Service Updating Project [Archives:2001/35/Business & Economy]

archive
August 27 2001

The Economic Head of the World Bank Mission to the Middle-East and North Africa, Mr. Mustafa Nabli reviewed Yemen’s economic & administrative reform program which includes the a project to upgrade the civil service in Yemen. The project aims at the establishment of a modern system for public administration which will be favorable to economic growth, particularly at the private sector. Furthermore, it will put an end to the interference of the scope of authorities between the different government bodies, restructure the public recruitment system and dismiss the redundant labor.
The World Bank believes that the most difficult initiative taken by the Yemeni Government with regard to the economic reform is the Civil Service Updating Project. Similarly the World Bank has also contributed in funding the administrative and financial reform program at its different phases which aim at eliminating the duplication of the scope of authorities shared by the Ministry of Finance, the General Authority for Investments and the Customs Authority. The problem has to do with which body of the aforementioned authorities has the right to grant tax and custom exemptions.
New mechanisms for economic reform
The different authorities concerned have initiated the formulation of new mechanisms for reforming the public administration system. Therefore, the Customs Authority has created a new monitoring policy for controlling the tax exemption procedures since it is a source for the administrative corruption and a wasting of public resource. Some estimations indicate that the tax exemption totaled the last year was YR 30 billion which have been granted to undeserving bodies. Moreover, exemptions at the estimated cost of 6 million have been granted to nonexistent project. Specialists believe that the reform of the public administrative system is encountering major difficulties in Yemen, particularly within the bodies in charge of taxes, customs and revenues. In spite of all these, efforts are exerted to upgrade the public administration system and improving the public services.
Dual employment
Within the administrative reform project the Ministry of Civil Service has specified the reasons behind the dual employment and the size of the surplus labor. Likewise it has adopted new policies for recruitment at the public sector and expects that the number of employees will rise to 459,406 civil servants in the year 2008. Moreover, the ministry expects that the retirement cases and the removal of the double employment will rise to 70,000 employment. The public recruitment restructure plan aims at renewing the recruitment structure at the rate of 1.4 % per year and focuses on recruiting highly qualified university graduates.
Surplus labor & wasting of public funds
Figures reveal the existence of redundant labor at the different government departments as the number of the employees totaled to 406,121 of which about 157,877 employees have been registered at the computerized system in 1996 in addition 3,977 employees have been discovered to have identical names.
Taken as a whole, the economic reform program will save billions of Riyals and will put an end to the continued wasting of public resources.

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