PLC confirms its full support for decisions of Central Bank

  Riyadh

Today, Friday, the Presidential Leadership Council held an extraordinary meeting via video call technology, chaired by His Excellency Dr. Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi, President of the Council. The meeting was held in the presence of all the Council’s members, Aidaroos Al-Zubaidi, Sultan Al-Arada, Tariq Saleh, Abdul Rahman Al-Mahrami, Dr. Abdullah Al-Alimi, Othman Mujli, and Faraj Al-Bahsani.

The Council addressed the developments in the economic, living, and service conditions, at the forefront were the variables related to fluctuations in exchange rates, electrical energy supplies, and measures to achieve economic and service stability. They also addressed the measures to alleviate the human suffering that was exacerbated by the attacks of the terrorist Houthi militias, proxy of the Iranian regime, on oil installations and international shipping lines.

The Council renewed the state’s commitment to fulfilling its responsibilities towards citizens, including ensuring regular payment of employee salaries, improving public revenues, and moving forward with comprehensive economic, administrative and financial reforms supported by brothers and friends.

In this context, the Council affirmed its full support for the decisions of the Central Bank of Yemen, its measures and policies aimed at protecting the banking system, ending monetary distortions, controlling inflation and the national currency, adopting governance principles, strengthening oversight over banks and foreign banking operations. The Council affirmed its support for responding to disclosure standards and compliance with anti-money laundering requirements and terrorist financing.

The Council reassured the banking sector and depositors of the importance of these measures, which only oblige banks in areas controlled by the terrorist Houthi militias to transfer the banks’ main operations departments, including information systems, data centers, international operations management, and compliance management. In addition, these measures oblige  them to hold their general assemblies’ meetings outside areas under the Houthi Militias control, to enable the Central Bank to carry out its constitutional and legal duties and powers in managing monetary policy, strengthening the position of the national currency and protecting depositors’ funds from the risks of being confiscated and frozen. In light of the continued dealings of these banks with a group designated as terrorist, and implementing its instructions in violation of the rules of banking and the provisions of the law.

The Presidential Leadership Council reiterated that all the actions of the Council and the government, including the recent economic decisions, come within a broader strategy aimed at strengthening the presence of the state and its legitimate institutions. It expresses the free national will, to achieve the interests of the Yemeni people in all parts of the country.

The Council explained that, from the first moment of its formation, it was keen to provide the required political support to the administration of the Central Bank of Yemen in its national battle against the Houthi arbitrary measures, and to facilitate the exercise of its full powers under the Central Bank Law and its independence.

The meeting indicated the keenness of the state leadership and the government over the past years to keep the banking sector away from the crisis created by the coup militias, but those militias understood this responsible behavior on the part of the state in a different way. They went to persist in their destructive practices of the national economy and the banking sector, and exacerbate the humanitarian disaster, threatening opportunities for monetary and financial stability, weakening confidence in the national currency, leading to the printing of counterfeit currency. In a failed attempt to share the legal status of the state, which is a red line that can never be allowed to be crossed.

The Council noted the Central Bank's report on the arbitrary and destructive practices and measures practiced by the Houthi militias against the banking and financial sector, taking advantage of the presence of most of the main banking centers in the city of Sana'a, which is subject to brute force.

According to the report, the terrorist militia violations included more than 20 arbitrary measures, including complicating the work environment of banks and financial institutions, restricting their banking activities, preventing the circulation of new issues of legal denominations of the national currency, seizing a large portion of the banks’ cash amounts, supplying them to the militia’s accounts and using them as sources of support for its war effort without regard to its impact on the banks’ activity and their ability to fulfill their obligations, in addition to placing them under international sanctions.

The Presidential Leadership Council confirmed that obliging banks and banking services to move their banking operations centers to the interim capital of Aden, was a choice of necessity. In light of these grave threats and violations of banking rules and their profound economic and humanitarian repercussions.

The Council  urged to continue the policy of economic firmness against the terrorist Houthi militias, in addition to adopting the utmost flexibility in dealing with stakeholders, and being open to discussing their proposals that contribute to liberating the banking sector from the grip of the militias, and creating appropriate conditions for banks to carry out their banking operations from the interim capital, of Aden. In a way that strengthens the legal status of the state.

The Presidential Leadership Council appreciated the international position that understands the recent decisions of the Central Bank, and all state institutions, as the main guarantor of the remaining livelihood opportunities and scarce sources of income for citizens.

The Council warned of the Houthi militias’ attempt to divert attention away from the suffering of citizens, and their destructive practices in the banking sector. By involving the just Palestinian cause to justify all their violations and opportunistic interests, in a desperate attempt to continue their open blackmail of the regional and international community, in the service of the Iranian regime that supports them.