Yemen: TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Overview: As a direct consequence of the country’s poverty, Yemen compares unfavorably with its Middle Eastern neighbors in terms of transportation infrastructure and communications network. Roads are generally poor, there is no rail network, efforts to upgrade airport facilities have languished, and telephone and Internet usage and capabilities are limited. The Port of Aden has shown a promising recovery from a 2002 attack; container throughput increased significantly in 2004 and 2005. The announcement in summer 2005 that the port’s main facility, Aden Container Terminal, would for the next 30 or more years be run by Dubai Ports International brings with it the prospect of future expansion.

Roads: Relative to Yemen’s size, the road transportation system is very limited. Yemen has 67,000 kilometers of roads, only 7,705 kilometers of which are paved. In the north, roads connecting Sanaa, Taizz, and Al Hudaydah are good, as are intercity bus services. In the south, roads are generally poor and in need of repair, except for the Aden-Taizz road. In November 2005, the World Bank approved a US$40 million project to upgrade approximately 200 kilometers of intermediate rural roads and approximately 75 kilometers of village access roads as part of a larger effort to strengthen Yemen’s capability for rural road planning and engineering.

Railroads: Yemen has no rail network.

Ports: Yemen’s main ports are Aden, Al Hudaydah, Al Mukalla, and Mocha; Aden is the primary port. In addition, Ras Isa serves as the loading point for oil exports, and a small amount of cargo passes through Nishtun.

Facilities at Aden consist of the Maalla Terminal and the Aden Container Terminal (ACT), which opened in March 1999. The port can handle roll-on-roll-off and container cargoes, as well as tankers. In November 2003, following the October 2002 bombing of the French supertanker Limburg off the Yemen coast and the resultant dramatic drop in throughput at the Aden port, the Port of Singapore Authority sold its majority stake in the ACT back to the Yemeni government. In June 2005, Dubai Ports International was selected to manage and operate the ACT (and possibly Maalla Terminal) under a 30-year or longer contract; the Yemeni government will remain a minority shareholder. The Port of Aden has recovered well from the 2002 bombing. In 2004 it had annual traffic of approximately 2,000 vessels and 318,901 twenty-foot-equivalent units of containers, mostly handled by the ACT. For the first 10 months of 2005, the port handled 232,279 twenty-foot-equivalent units of containers, more than double the amount for 2003. The Port of Aden ranked 143^rd in the world in terms of total container throughput in 2004.

Inland Waterways: Yemen has no waterways of any significant length.

Civil Aviation and Airports: Yemen has 45 airports, 16 of which have paved runways. Of the 45 airports, four are international—Aden International, Sanaa International, Taizz, and Al Hudaydah. A major reconstruction and expansion of Aden International was completed in 2001, including a new runway that can handle large, long-haul aircraft. Plans to make that airport a regional cargo hub, with an “air cargo village,” by 2004 appear to have failed. Although construction began in January 2003, by year’s end the managing company had dissolved, and there has been no further progress on this project.

Yemenia is the national airline; it absorbed the former national carrier of South Yemen in 1996. It is expected that Yemenia, which is currently 49 percent owned by the Saudi Arabian government and 51 percent owned by the Yemen government, will eventually be privatized, but there has been resistance from the Saudis. In 2000 the airline carried 844,000 passengers. The airline’s existing fleet of 15 airplanes is rapidly becoming outdated, despite the 2002 lease of three new aircraft.

Pipelines: According to the U.S. government, as of 2004 Yemen had a total of 1,262 kilometers of pipeline. This total includes pipeline designed for gas (88 kilometers) and oil (1,174 kilometers).

Telecommunications: TeleYemen is the exclusive provider of international telecommunications for Yemen—fixed-line, telex, and Internet services—and is one of the mobile-phone operators. In 2003 the government-owned Public Telecommunications Corporation assumed full control of TeleYemen, and a year later it awarded a five-year management contract to France Telecom.

According to the U.S. government, Yemen had only 220,000 Internet users in 2005. This low number is attributed to the high cost of computer equipment and connections in combination with the population’s low level of income, as well as to the restricted bandwidth available on Yemen’s outdated telephone network. In 2005 TeleYemen announced it would invest in the FALCON high-capacity loop cable system, which will improve Internet access, including broadband capability, and also expand international call accessibility.

The cost of running a landline or owning a mobile telephone is out of reach for most of Yemen’s poor population, resulting in very low telephone usage rates—3.9 fixed-line subscribers and 5.2 mobile subscribers per 100 persons in 2004. The U.S. government reported 798,100 landlines in use and nearly 1.1 million mobile subscribers in Yemen in 2004. The technology used for domestic lines includes microwave radio relay, cable, and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). In 2001 two private companies won 15-year licenses to provide mobile phone services. Although their programs to expand services resulted in a 147 percent increase in mobile phone subscriptions between 2003 and 2004, threats to internal security coupled with poor consumer payment history have hindered growth. In August 2005, the government awarded a contract to a joint venture between China Mobile and a group of Yemeni investors to take a 55 percent stake in Yemen’s third mobile network; the government will retain a 25 percent share.

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