[05/March/2008]

By Suaad Al Salahi


SANA'A, March 05 (Saba)- Although Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Arab region and the only poor in the rich-oil Arabian Peninsula, the government started in recent years paying more attention to the problem of poverty in the country.

In 1998, the percentage of Yemenis live in the poverty levels reached to 41.8% of the population. In 2002, the government adopted "a Poverty Reduction Strategy", seeking to reduce poverty to 35.9%
by 2005.

Under its strategy, the developing country identified microfinance as one of the most effective tools in eradicating poverty in the country. The microfinance enables poor people to expand their businesses, increase their incomes and augment the number of employments, thereby contributing to the economic development of the country.

According to the Small and Micro Enterprise Baseline Survey of 2002,310,000 small and micro enterprises (SME) in Yemen employed approximately 485,000 people in 2002, which represents only12% of the total number of economically active people in the country.

Practitioners in Yemen have begun to realize the potential in providing financial services to the poor and are presently in the process of shaping the field, setting principles and developing the best practices that reflect the needs of the local entrepreneurs in the country.

The European Commission (EC) has been contributing its efforts to help the government to fight the poverty and apply a program of re-structure reform for national economics for improving the statutes of food security for the poorest families in the country through the Social Welfare Fund (SWF), the only governmental body which is interested to help the poor focusing on directing cash transfers to the needy families.

Technical Assistance program (TA) to support SWF is one of the EC projects in Yemen aims at developing the Fund's capacity to meet sustainable development services provided to the poor, where the budget of the first phase of the project was €3.5 million for 2003-2006.

In early 2007, TA launched the second phase of the program for improving living conditions of SWF's beneficiaries and empowering the poorest families, which live under the line of the poverty, to get the basic needs from food, clothes and housing.

Within objectives of his mission in Yemen, International expert of Monitoring and Evaluation in the project Mr. Walter Aschmoneit, who works for Monitoring and Evaluation department (M&E) in SWF, said that the department focuses on alleviating and vulgarizing the poor sectors of the Yemeni society by forwarding cash and in-kind assistance to the poor families and individuals.

For insuring welfare and protection, the project grants subsidies to the poor people, according to their physical and health circumstances or their age don't enable them to gain self-sufficiency, so the project gives assistances to whom have principle capable of gaining self-sufficiency by qualifying and training them to enhance their skills so that they can receive small business loans from banks and other financing organizations.

Pointing to M&E duties in controlling, following up the implementation of the project performance and identifying weak points to solve them, Aschmoneit said that he had visited the poorest province in the country, Hodeidah province, where a training course was held for the M&E branch staff and researchers in the province.

"During the training, I presented a paper over the system of monitoring, evaluating and providing a program of STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES and THREATS (SWOT) for the participants", said Aschmoneit.

Aschmoneit added that the program is famous internationally and anyone can use it with his/her family, making it clear that SWOT analyses divided on three levels:- The SWF Governorate Branch Office of Hodeidah Governorate.- The SWF District Office of Al Mohravia District in Al Hodeidah Governorate.- The M&E General Directorate of the Head office of SWF.

After his visits to three villages of Mohravia District in Hodeidah, Aschmoneit realized that people in the rural areas are poor because they do not have adequate access to the basic necessities such as land, safe water, health care and education.