In a workshop named 'Democratic Reform in Yemen and its Economic and Social Impact'  organized by Information and Human Rights Center, participants stressed on the importance of having economic reforms whose success is conditioned by making comprehensive political reforms.

The participants also saw that conducting political reforms will help make economic reforms a great success, hinting that parliament and Shoura councils as well as local authority should be granted wide authorities in control and auditing.

They further maintained that the Anti-corruption Committee should have more authorities together with adopting a transparent and open policy as well as committing the government to submit annual and biannual reports to parliament to measure its performance and hold on account for shortcomings.

In his paper on Yemen's overall economic indicators, Ahmed Saeed Al-Dahai believes that there is economic deficiency at the overall economic indicators, maintaining that a Yemeni citizen has no fixed living standard especially under the constant increase of price and declining income. 

According to Al-Dahi, prices have doubled or tripled in some cases over 2007-2008 and living costs have increased 15 times more than what is used to cost in 1990, with an average income of $420-530 per year.

Over 90 percent of city inhabitants live in rented houses and people own modest and unsuitable houses in rural areas, with more than one family amassed in them, stressing the current income cannot cover for the basic necessities let alone rent fees and maintenance.

He added that a Yemeni citizen has to pay 90 percent of health service fees and 100 percent for medicine especially when just 5 percent is allocated for health in state's general budget. Further, the coverage of health services does not exceed 40 percent.

Similarly, only 30 percent of Yemen's population have access to clean drinking water and an individual's annual share of water does not exceed 123 m3, while his peer in other Arab countries consumes over 2,500 m3. The citizen also pays 90 percent of the drinking water bill's costs.

As for education services, Al-Dahi points out that there is a clear failure in containing students against increased drop-out rates and bad quality of teaching, with 85 percent of students who do graduate specialize at weak and simple faculties at the universities.

There is also imbalance in the number of teachers and schools and girls' drop-out rates are on rise. Only 50 percent of children at primary school age, mounting to 5 million, join schools, therefore keeping Yemen one of the weakest countries educational wise worldwide.

According to the workshop papers, water and electricity bills take up 20 percent of family income, while electricity coverage does not exceed 45 percent of population, as more than 10 million citizens live without electricity. Still, this service is subject to constant cuts.

Social services are non-existent and authorities do not give them any attention. In this regard, the paper indicates that the existence of political reforms will have a good impact on achieving higher rates of the total growth as well as an increase in individual's income.

In his paper addressing the impact of privatization policies on Yemen's economic reforms, Mohammed Al-Maytami stated that the general expenditures represents one third of the Gross National Product; while wages and economic institutions support takes up half of state expenditures without making any returns.

Al-Maytami further stressed that public and mix sectors contributed YR 22 billion in 1997, and the general debt of both sectors was YR 21.5 billion, almost equal to their monetary value.

He considered privatization to be among the components of the comprehensive financial and administrative reforms, hinting that the government privatized 100 public corporations by 2000, employing only 33,000 people.

However, the privatization program has not included big corporations as for electricity, telecommunications and oil and stresses that turning public property into a private one was accompanied with several false measures and by incompetent employees.