Riyadh meeting is for enhancing Yemen’s absorptive capacity for external funds

Riyadh meeting is for enhancing Yemen’s absorptive capacity for external funds

Studies & Economic Media Center (SEMC) expressed its disappointment of the outcomes of the meetings that held recently in the General Secretariat of the Cooperation Council for Gulf Arab states, Riyadh, between Yemeni and donors to identify the development needs of yemen.
 
SEMC clarified, in a press release, that the lack of final statement for the conference and the apology of Secretary-General of GCC’s  to attend the meetings, in addition to the absence of high-level representation of the GCC States  and donors, made the conference’s outcomes less than the expected as well as there is no new financial allocations for Yemen.
 
For his part, Abdullah al-Shater, Deputy Minister of Planning and International Cooperation said that Riyadh conference is held for evaluation and improve the absorptive capacity of Yemen to get their assistance as well as in operational mechanism to complete the signing of agreements and the allocation of the amounts of donor, allocated during  London in 2006.
 
He confirmed that the Riyadh Conference is not held for the adoption of new financial commitments to Yemen, but the ways and mechanism which enable Yemen to accommodate with grants in the previous financial implementation.
 
 Al-Shater stressed that Riyadh conference confirmed on the completion of allocations and signing the contracts between Yemen and donors by this year, calling donors to open the donor offices in Sana’a to undertake the implementation of financed projects such as USAID which supervise all American projects.
 
He affirmed the need to accelerate the allocation of donor pledges to Yemen to enable the government of Yemen to get benefits of these projects to support the development process.
 
The two-day Gulf Cooperation Council’s focused on why much of some 5.7 billion dollars in pledged international aid remained unused by Yemen.
 
“The main problem is capacity,” said Abdul Aziz al-Uwaisheg, GCC director general for international economic relations.
 
The Riyadh meeting involved mostly technical experts comparing their views of why the billions of dollars in aid first pledged at a November 2006 London meeting -- 4.7 billion at first which was later topped up to 5.7 billion -- had not been moving.
 
The GCC meeting also took a first look at Yemen’s next five-year development plan covering for 2011-2015.
 
About 70 percent of Yemen’s earnings are from oil and gas exports, but a steady decline in production could wipe out that income in eight to ten years, according to economists.
 
The Studies and Economic Media Center (SEMC) organized on Feb,20 the seminar on the Conditions of Absorption of External Funds for the Development Plans in Yemen, called donors for the establishment of “execution units” within government bodies to manage and ensure the effectiveness of privately and publicly funded projects.

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