News - Yemen: Officials confirmed on Sunday that the US-Saudi aggression has targeted the industrial sector in Yemen and considered this a tool of the economic war, which negatively affected the people's standard of living.

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance for the Statistics and Planning Sector, Ahmed Hajar, said in a statement to Al Masirah Network that reliance on the outside world in the manufacturing sector doubled the burdens of the economic war. 

He stressed that the Saudi-led aggression focused on Yemen's dependence on imports and considered this as a tool of economic war.

Hajar stated that the economic war targeted this sector to create an economic downturn and to raise the costs of production inputs. He noted that targeting the manufacturing sector contributed to the decline in the domestic product and affected the standard of living of people.

For his part, Nazmi Abdulrahim, Director General of National Accounts in the Central Statistical Organization, explained to Al Masirah that the cumulative contraction rate in the manufacturing sector reached 55 percent at its lowest level.

Abdulrahim noted that the aggression focused on direct targeting of various industrial and production facilities, but a percentage of them were unable to regain their activity. He added that despite the severity of targeting the manufacturing sector and others, the community created alternatives and created investment movements, albeit limited.

He stressed that targeting the industrial sector contributed to putting pressure on the population's standard of living and raising unemployment levels.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The war has had dire consequences on the country's economy, causing a drop in its gross domestic product from $35.7 billion in 2014 to $20.1 billion in 2019.

Reports evaluating the impact of the war on Yemen issued by the United Nations Development Program expected the country’s gross domestic product to reach $100.3 billion in 2030.

During the first five years of the war on Yemen 2015-2019, the losses amounted to 15.6 billion dollars, bringing the GDP in that year to 20.1 billion dollars.

Reports confirm that the per capita GDP growth rate has begun to improve since 2014, the year during which Yemen witnessed the outbreak of the September 21 revolution.

The economic effects of the war and the blockade imposed on Yemen also included the so-called economic output losses, which amounted to $88.8 billion during 2019.

As a result of the war and siege, the Yemeni economy lost nearly $90 billion during the period from 2014 to 2020, as it lost a large part of the capital for the public and private sectors, which represents the summary of work and economic achievements over the past decades.

Expectations indicate that the economy of Yemen, which is going through very critical conditions, after the rates of cumulative decline in macroeconomic indicators reached their worst stage, will continue to decline as long as the war and siege continue.

Preliminary estimates of the World Bank indicate that the financing requirements necessary for the recovery of the Yemeni economy are estimated at 88 billion dollars, at 17.6 billion dollars annually for a period of 5 years.

The real GDP of Yemen shrank by about 46 percent during the period 2015-2020, and the cumulative losses in the real GDP amounted to about $49.8 billion during the same period.

The World Bank estimated that between 71 to 78 percent of Yemenis, representing 21 million people, were included below the poverty line at the end of 2019.

The economic war waged by the countries of the coalition of aggression against the Yemeni people has caused a rise in the prices of basic foodstuffs and social services, which has led to an increase in poverty and the risk of starvation for millions of people.