Yemen Economic Bulletin

Introduction The value of the Yemeni rial (YR) has been collapsing dramatically since the end of August in areas nominally controlled by the internationally recognized Yemeni government. This has spurred a rapid deterioration in the living conditions of millions of people and widespread social unrest. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also recently allocated the Yemeni government substantial financial support that,…

This paper critically analyzes ‘famine’ and its function in the Yemeni context, considering how its technical definition and operational frameworks – which have become gatekeepers to famine declaration - (mis)match the food security crisis in Yemen. It proposes a new conceptualization of famine beyond a lack of food, or fixating exclusively on physical and economic access to food. Instead, it centers political factors – and actors – that actively create famine conditions and the aid responses to them, which have…

Following an escalation in recent months, there was some progress by the end of November in mediating a solution to end the struggle between the two fragmented branches of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) over access to financial data from the country's commercial and Islamic banks and money exchange outlets

The rival branches of the fragmented Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) have recently escalated their battle for control over access to data held by the country’s commercial and Islamic banks and money exchange firms, threatening the viability of the financial sector overall and risking a broad spectrum of economic and humanitarian fallout.

On April 29, Houthi authorities in Sana’a formally enacted new regulations on the collection and use of zakat, the Islamic obligation for individuals to donate a portion of their wealth each year to charitable causes. The executive bylaw, signed by Mehdi al-Mashat, president of the Houthi-run Supreme Political Council (SPC), imposes a khums tax (literally meaning “one-fifth”, or 20 percent)…

Exchange rate divergence between Sana’a and Aden reached a record high by the end of August, with a Yemeni rial worth 33 percent less in Aden than in Sana’a. The rial was trading at YR805 per US$1 in the Aden parallel exchange market, compared to YR605 per US$1 in Sana’a. The difference in value of the rial between government- and…

The images are familiar by now: Yemenis in Houthi-controlled territory queue at fuel stations, amid announced shortages. Meanwhile, fuel tankers build up in the Coalition Holding Area (CHA), located in international waters in the Red Sea offshore of Jizan, Saudi Arabia.

On 25 April, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) declared emergency self-rule across all southern Yemen in a direct challenge to the authority of the internationally recognized Yemeni government. This assertion of influence was quickly shown to be overly ambitious, with various southern governors rejecting the STC declaration and Yemeni government forces fighting back.

In January 2020, demonstrators heckled a delegation of bankers leaving Lebanon’s central bank. What was unique in this situation, however, was the identity of the banking delegation. These bankers were not Lebanese but Yemeni.

Since September 2016, competing branches of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) have operated from either side of the frontlines in the country’s ongoing armed conflict, with the resultant fragmentation in monetary policy increasingly undermining domestic currency stability. Recently this has led to an accelerating collapse of the Yemeni rial-based currency system altogether and driven a migration toward the use of hard currencies – primarily Saudi riyals and United States dollars – for financial transactions inside the country.