Marib infection.. Calls to stop the supply of revenues of the southern governorates to the Central Bank

English - Saturday 17 June 2023 الساعة 03:48 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, exclusive:

The unannounced decision of the governor of the capital, Aden, Ahmed Hamid Lamlas, to stop the supply of revenues from the revenue sectors in Aden to the Central Bank of Yemen, sparked mixed reactions between supporters and opponents of this step.

The move of the governor of the capital came against the background of the deterioration of the electricity service in conjunction with the high temperature rise due to the lack of fuel, amid accusations of the government and its president, Maeen Abdul Malik, of failing to provide fuel for the city's power plants.

The decision was widely supported by the people of the city and in the southern street in general, through the welcoming reactions of southern activists on social networking sites, amid southern calls for the implementation of this step by the rest of the governors of the southern governorates. It is an invitation adopted by the Presidency of the Transitional Council in its last meeting last Tuesday.

On the other hand, the decision of the governor of Aden, Ahmed Lamlas, who is one of the leaders of the Southern Transitional Council, was attacked sharply and fiercely by the opponents of the Transitional Council, specifically the Brotherhood, whose activists and affiliated media attacked the decision. They described it as a "coup" by the Transitional Council against the legitimacy of the Presidential Leadership Council.

This Brotherhood attack against the decision of the governor of Aden prompted southern activists on social media to respond to it and remind them of the position of the Ma’rib authorities loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, refusing to supply the governorate’s oil and gas revenues to the central bank in Aden since the beginning of the war in 2015, and the continued absence of linkage between the bank and its branch in Marib.

This was confirmed by the bank’s governor, Ahmed Ghaleb Al-Maabqi, in his interview with the state-run “Yemen” channel, last Sunday, who revealed that the government’s account in Marib is “exposed to hundreds of billions,” which means that the Marib authorities are restricting expenditures at the government’s expense without restricting the governorate’s collected revenues.

While the governor stressed his demand from the first day of his appointment about a year and a half ago to rectify the bank's situation in Marib, he revealed the details of an official meeting held at the time in Riyadh, in the presence of the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, in which the matter was discussed.

Where he said that he demanded at the meeting to form a committee that would work on supplying all revenues in Marib to the bank branch and to approve a budget for the governorate according to which the disbursement would take place. However, he said that the Minister of Finance asked for a period of two days only for "consultation", and commented by saying: Unfortunately, these two days turned into 18 months. .

Referring to his repeated demands to rectify the situation in Marib, the last of which was in August of last year, with an official memorandum in which he demanded the formation of a committee of the supervisory and financial authorities and the leadership of the bank to go to Marib and review the branch’s work and prepare a final account for the past years.