6 yıl önce

Yemen's plunging currency deepens war woes

The conflict in Yemen has unleashed a humanitarian crisis, including a deadly cholera epidemic, and economic collapse which the UN says has the potential to cause one of the deadliest famines of modern times.

AP

For more than a year, the government has been unable to pay salaries and the riyal has more than halved in value against the dollar, leaving Yemenis unable to afford food staples and bottled water.

Against the backdrop of the war, Yemen is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades. Its currency, the riyal, is in freefall, and has dropped to record lows against the US dollar.

When a Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war in March 2015, a US dollar was worth 215 Yemeni Riyals.

By January of this year, that had risen to 510 which has left people in the capital, Sanaa struggling to get by.

More than one million civil servants lost their jobs in 2016, when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi moved the central bank from rebel-held Sanaa to Aden.

The conflict in Yemen has left more than three-quarters of the population in need of humanitarian aid and 8.4 million at risk of famine, according to the United Nations.

TRT World's Abubakr al Shamahi has more.