CNN did a little story about Yemen’s “Queen of oranges.” You can read it here. It’s a nice story, a poor woman from Yemen’s rural area does well and is now wealthy. She flies to various parts of the world and does lots of business. It’s great, she had to work through a lot of cultural problems to get to where she is and deserves all of it. Unfortunately, this article also gives us a glimpse of some of the major economic problems that Yemen has. You’ll notice that she is one of 8 licensed fruit brokers in Sana’a. Why does one need a license to be a fruit wholesaler? Why does the government need to be involved at all? It’s one thing to need a business license (for tax purposes), but it’s another to have a special permission to sell fruit.
It’s another revenue stream for the government of course. Like most economies that are not doing well, the Yemeni economy is burdened with way too many bureaucratic thumbs in the pie, let’s not even talk about the various government people taking their own, private cuts of the business… . One wonders how many more people (and women in particular) would become successful if it was easier to start a business there. Make it easier to start a (legal) business, and you’ll see improvements.