DUBAI: Yemen’s annual inflation rose to 7.6 percent in March, the highest this year, while central bank reserves continued to erode in April, official data showed as the government faced public anger at the economy’s poor performance.
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi replaced several top ministers on Wednesday amid rising popular discontent fuelled in part by weeks of power cuts, high prices and long queues at petrol stations.
Inflation rose from 6.7 percent in February, which was its lowest level since December 2012. Core inflation, which excludes volatile prices of food, tobacco and qat leaf, hit a 19-month high of 10.7 percent in March against 8.8 percent in February. Clothing and footwear price inflation has been running at over 30 percent for the past four months, standing at 37.6 percent in March, up from 30.8 percent in the previous month.
Food inflation accelerated to 4.8 percent year-on-year in March from 4.4 percent in February, the data showed.
Compared to the previous month, living costs in Yemen, where a third of the population live on less than $2 a day, jumped 1.3 percent in March, the fastest rise since September 2012.
Reflecting the government’s failure to secure oil pipelines against bomb attacks, the central bank’s gross foreign asset reserves slipped for a fifth consecutive month to $4.7bn in April, their lowest level since June 2012. Crude oil exports, which account for around 70 percent of government budget revenue, jumped 39 percent year-on-year to $249m in April, but that was after 10 straight months of hefty declines.
Reuters
