File Photo: An employee takes bundles of Yemeni Riyal. (REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)
Saudi Arabia will deposit $1 billion in Yemen’s Aden-based central bank to help stabilize the local currency, a senior official at the bank told Bloomberg.
The official said the payment was part of support, announced by Saudi Arabia last year, to prop up the Yemeni rial and boost the war-ravaged country’s public finances.
The Saudi Finance Ministry declined to comment, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t immediately respond to a request. Reuters reported the news earlier Wednesday, citing an unidentified Saudi source.
A separate $1 billion deposit was made in November but authorities in Yemen were worried that a second payment would not be forthcoming after a UN-brokered truce expired in October. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had pledged $3 billion in aid for Yemen as part of the truce agreed in April.
The United Nations has described the effects of the war as one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and Saudi Arabia has come under criticism in the West for its involvement in a conflict which has killed nearly 400,000 and destroyed much of he nation’s economy and infrastructure.
