Expert: Trade is the first source to finance the militias military budget
English - Sunday 31 March 2019 الساعة 07:39 pm
Aden – NewsYemen.net
The Yemeni private sector has presented several initiatives, calling conflicting parties in Yemen neutralizing all economic activities.
However, reality indicators confirm that most of its material and commodity services are provided to the armed Houthi militias.
Economists confirm that the current war has spawned the influential trade. A group of merchants and businessmen have joined forces of the Houthi militias to protect their interests, and operate according to their priorities and directives as well as pay money to finance their military budgets.
"The Yemeni commercial sector has been subjected to various kinds of blackmail in areas controlled by the armed militias", the economic expert Sultan al-Saghir said to Newsyemen.
The traders pay double taxes, pay old taxes, pay levies and royalties of the War Effort, the Prophet's birth, under several names, and run convoys of aid to militia fighters, the expert added.
Al-Saghir added that the private sector has not taken any effective national positions to support the efforts of restoring the State, but it continues to finance the armed militias in order to preserve its own interest.
The Houthi militias gathered more than Y.R 4.5 billion of tax revenues in 2018, while the Central Bank of Aden continues to sell the dollars to traders at a preferential price, less than the market price.
Most of the commercial and industrial institutions operate in the areas of the Houthi militias and do not make any commitments to the liberated areas, and all their money continues to be paid centrally to Houthi.
Studies show that ten commercial houses control about 80% of the import and export trade, the telecommunications sector - the transport of goods, as well as manufacturing, banking and money transfer are in non-liberated areas.
Few in the private sector also monopolizes some goods, products and services, such as grain imports, the most important food commodity, limited in the only seven commercial companies, six of them run in the Houthi controlled-areas and one in Aden.
