Local Editor
Yemen’s biggest traders have stopped new wheat imports due to a crisis at the central bank.
Documents seen by Reuters show another blow to the war-torn country where millions are suffering acute malnutrition.
At the same time, aid agencies are warning that Yemen - the Arab world’s poorest country - is on the verge of famine, although they have yet to declare one.
Trade and aid sources say the situation was compounded in September when fugitive former president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, ordered the central bank’s headquarters moved from the capital Sana’a to the southern port of Aden.
This has led in effect to a de facto partition, with rival institutions in the north and south.
In a Nov. 30 letter addressed to Yemen’s trade ministry in Sana’a, which the company had dealt with before Hadi’s decree to move, leading trader Fahem Group, said: "We would like to inform you that we have been unable to conduct any new contracts for wheat as local banks cannot transfer dollars for the value of any wheat cargoes."
A separate letter, also addressed to the Houthi-run authorities in Sana’a by major importer Hayel Saeed Group and other large traders, said those firms had stopped new wheat shipments and urged resolution of the financing problems. Together, those groups accounted for almost all the rest of the wheat imports.
Nearly two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Houthi Ansarullah movement has left more than half of Yemen’s 28 million people "food insecure", with 7 million of them enduring hunger, according to the United Nations.
Fahem Group imported an estimated 1.2 million tonnes of wheat into the Red Sea port of Saleef between April 2015 and April 2016, which accounted for between 30 to 40 percent of Yemen’s total wheat imports, according to trade estimates.
The UN says half of all Yemenis already do not have enough food, with almost 18.8m people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
Rising prices of food, fuel, water and medicine have combined with the closure of half the country’s medical facilities to trigger a humanitarian crisis. Almost 2.2m children in Yemen are "acutely malnourished" and 462,000 suffer from severe acute malnutrition, a four-fold increase since 2014, according to Unicef.
Hunger is acutest in the rugged northern regions that form the powerbase of the Houthi movement. In these mountain provinces, stunting - delayed growth in children caused by chronic malnutrition - affects eight in 10 children, he said.
"We are all struggling to bring life-saving supplies to reach all corners of the country," said Dr Sherin Varkey, Unicef’s deputy representative in Yemen. "The international community needs to recognize the urgency to respond in Yemen."
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
