Yemen's Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujwar said Tuesday his government pays great attention to the sector of small and smaller projects to limit rates of unemployment, to employ idle energies and render care for the poor and the needy.

The prime minister affirmed that the government programme has focused on the poor, the needy and those of limited income for rendering care to them; improve their social conditions and living standards.

The programme also focuses on raising their situations to a better level as well as the focus on expanding programmes of lending to small and smaller enterprises.

Addressing the 4th conference on the smaller financing "Sanabul" the prime minister revealed government plans for establishing banks for the smaller financing in Yemen and encouraging other banks to lend small investors besides improvement and development services of funding these enterprises. He also called on Arab banks to contribute to support this means and target the poor segment and to improve the level of its performance.

 Dr Mujwar praised the role of the Social Fund for Development in Yemen in developing small enterprises, saying the fund has overcome many hindrances it faced in assisting this industry and ability of the government to establish a national strategy for small and smaller projects.

On his part the deputy premier, minister of planning and international cooperation Abdulkarim Al-Arhaby said the gap is still wide between the volume of the market and the number of beneficiaries and that necessitates more efforts to
He said since its establishment in 1997 the fund realized the importance of small enterprises for the national economy and their ability to absorb labour and alleviate rates of poverty.

Sanabul was founded in 2002 by 16 founding members from seven Arab countries. Sanabul is a regional network based on membership of financing establishments for smaller enterprises in the Arab countries.