Salaries.. a Houthi pretext to rob oil and gas revenues in the liberated areas

 The recent visit of the Omani delegation to Sana'a to meet with the leadership of the Houthi group, Iran's arm in Yemen, has shed light on the failure of regional and international efforts 10 months ago to reach a comprehensive agreement to renew the UN armistice and initiate political negotiations to end the conflict in Yemen.

 This failure is due to the set of obstacles placed by the Houthi group in the face of these efforts, and its insistence on imposing its demands in this agreement and wrapping it with the banner of "humanitarian demands", represented in lifting all restrictions on Sana'a airport and the port of Hodeidah and paying the salaries of employees in the areas under its control according to the 2014 budget and statements.

The last item is the main point of disagreement between the group on the one hand and the alliance and legitimacy on the other hand and the point of view of each party on the file, in addition to the size of the complexities related to the file and its connection to other thorny files awaiting the two parties in the negotiations for a political settlement.

 The dispute starts from the point of determining who is included in the process of paying salaries in the areas controlled by the Houthi group, where the legitimate government insists that the matter be limited to civil servants only according to the 2014 lists, while obligating the Houthi group to harness the revenues of the port of Hodeidah for that according to what is stipulated in the Stockholm Agreement signed in late 2018.

What the government puts forward is rejected by the Houthi group and presents a completely different vision, as it demands the payment of salaries in the areas under its control from the revenues of exporting oil and gas produced in the liberated governorates, according to the figures of the 2014 budget and not the employee statements for the year 2014, while refusing to talk about the revenues of the port of Hodeidah and the rest of the revenues it collects in the areas of its control.  

 Recently, there has been talk about the existence of an initial agreement in the efforts led by Oman between Al-Houthi and Saudi Arabia as a compromise between the two points of view based on the disbursement of salaries from oil and gas export revenues, as proposed by Al-Houthi, but according to the 2014 lists as proposed by the government, with the dispute remaining over determining the payment of civil servants as proposed. The government proposes or includes the military and security forces, as Houthi demands.

Despite the positive news about resolving the most important obstacles to the agreement, the complications related to the implementation mechanism and agreement on it seem more difficult due to the reality that has been created since the war 8 years ago and the difference between the figures of 2014 and today's numbers, in addition to the financial and banking division imposed by the Houthi group.

 According to the 2014 budget presented by the Government of National Accord at the time to Parliament, oil and gas revenues were estimated at 938 billion riyals, while the salaries item was estimated at 977 billion riyals, distributed between 435 billion riyals for the army, security and intelligence, and 542 billion riyals for civil sector salaries.

 In view of the oil and gas revenues estimated at 938 billion riyals, it is clear from the details of the budget that half of this amount, 472 billion, is due to the revenues from sales of oil that is refined locally in Aden refineries, which has stopped since 2016.

In addition to 136 billion riyals expected revenues for the government from exporting gas in the Balhaf project, which has also stopped, and about 35 billion riyals expected revenues from selling gas locally and produced from Safer in Marib.

 While the estimate of crude oil export revenues for the year 2014 does not exceed 313 billion riyals only (about $1.4 billion), a figure that does not cover the salaries of civil servants according to the same budget, which is estimated at 542 billion riyals.

 Despite this, oil export revenues in the 2014 budget, according to the exchange rate at the time, are not much different from 2022 , which is estimated according to Central Bank data and government statements at about $1.5 billion. However, the difference lies in the value of the local currency between this period.

Here, the most important dilemma arises in the matter of paying salaries, which is the financial and banking division imposed by the Houthi group, which created a difference between the value of the local currency in the areas under its control and the liberated areas.

 Agreeing to pay salaries from oil and gas export revenues, which are of course in hard currency, necessitates unifying the value of the local currency to unify the process of disbursing salaries, and necessitates with it unifying the body that collects oil sales and disbursing them as salaries to employees.

 Facts that the Houthi group realizes the difficulty of overcoming and its connection to the agreement on the issues of the final solution, which explains its insistence on its point of view in the salary file that the oil export revenues be divided with the legitimate government according to the population density and that it obtains 70-80% of these revenues, which represents the real goal for the group to rob it after it was unable to do so militarily, and the salary peg raises a cover to achieve this goal.

المصدر: نيوزيمن