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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 5
(7 of 22 pages)
Some expenditures in 1998 fell. We started to feel political resentment. The private
sector also felt the pinch because in 1997 we were very much compensated by various actions that the government
took. We made the public private sector distribute the old communities that were mainly distributed by the government
or by state control. In 1998 when we started to liberate these communities and early in 1999 they lost some sort
of their business. So, we were to some extent in quite a difficult situation both the business and also the labor
force which were not affected in 1996 and 1997 because the government assured their stay and created a special
service in order to fund those factories and state enterprises that were to be privatized.
The challenges that we see in Yemen is of course their main challenge for any economic reform a democratic reform
programs is of course public consensus. We find it quite difficult to keep up because we have not really been able
to achieve what the public is expecting to have growth. This is of course not an easy and not a short-term delivery
that could be done. Yemen has only engage in economic reforms for three years. I think this is a very very short
time to really judge on the final destination of the reforms. We believe that a lot of patience needs to be done
but in a democratic society we have to really explain to the public and to really get into more dialogue work with
opposition parties to really understand the logic of reforms and also the objectives. I think the challenges are
mainly in this. The risk of slow down of course in economic reforms and democratization is there because to create
the consensus needed one would need a lot of transitional resources in order to put them into economic activities.
To me they are challenges. I think we are after mobilizing all our domestic resources we are very much looking
to international transitional assistance and we wish that such assistance could become more active and more directed
to these countries that are in need.
I have some points I would like to share with you, ideas maybe if we can try through our governments and through
also our various institutions to adopt them.
First of all the multilateral financial institutions. We feel that they make mandates and conditions very difficult
for those countries in transformation. Sometimes they give you a lot of mandates that you cannot really convince
parliament of because we live in a democracy. You cannot convince parliaments to really vote for special programs
with special actions that you take. They make it as a mandate and as a condition. Of course when we lobby for democratization
and those institutions also should really understand that democratization would mean that they are trying their
best to avoid such terrible incidents and problems with the demographic system. Economic reform has to go hand
in hand with democratization.
The second is internal economic powers. I think there has to be some sort of local of course introducing some new
lending schemes. Of course in the 80's it was much easier for NDC's(ph) now with the reform I think borrowing would
be very much objective and it would lead to development and to sustainable democratization and sustainable economic
achievements. The terms should also be in my view being looked at as a mean of the campaign to revise. The G8 declaration
to write off 70 billion dollars of debts I think a lot of campaigns have to be done in order to have a more logical
categorization as to include new emerging democracies and economic reform in countries in such categorization and
to have the priority of such.
An environment compensation fund should also be campaigned and lobbied for internationally. As we know on the average
every one person in the more developed nations could use and degreate environment by almost 6 or 7 folds of that
derived from one person in our developing countries.
These are the main things so I would just to sum up that our countries, and our achievements and our looks for
the future depend very much on how well we pretend in raising up campaigns and goals for achieving maybe some of
these ideas that we can share. Thank you very much and I hope I did not exceed so much of my time.
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