A grant of $200 million ordered Tuesday by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz to Yemen’s Central Bank helped shore up the weak Yemeni currency, which has lost more than half its value against the US dollar.
Only hours after Saudi Arabia announced the donation, bankers in Sanaa and Aden said the rial recuperated about 20 percent of its worth.
They said the overall average exchange rate of the rial against the US dollar registered 680 following the grant. A day earlier, the rial had reached a record level of 830 against the dollar.
“This grant will contribute, in addition to previous deposits to the Yemeni Central Bank totaling $3 billion, to easing the economic burden on the brotherly Yemeni people,” the Saudi Press Agency wrote on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Mohammed bin Saeed Al-Jaber, Saudi ambassador to Yemen, said his country would not allow Iran-backed Houthi militias to destroy the Yemeni currency, the same way they destroyed and killed the Yemeni people.
“The Kingdom will continue to support the Yemeni government on the political, economic, military and humanitarian levels,” the ambassador stressed.
He made his comments during a meeting with head of the emergency desk of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Teresa Sancristobal to review humanitarian efforts and operations in Yemen.
