President: Without PGC’s reforms, economy would have collapsed

SANA’A, Feb 19 (Saba)- President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday that without the People’s General Congress adopting reforms program in 1995, the national economy would have collapsed by now. In an address of 4th session of the PGC’s Permanent Committee in Sana’a, President Saleh said the PGC’s program of economic, political and administrative reforms, in the aftermath of the 1994 war with seditionists, prevented the economy from plunging into irreversible crisis. “We sacrificed 56 martyrs in 1998, when we launched the economic reforms,” Saleh said maintaining that the PGC “endured all those tasks for the sake of the whole nation”. “The PGC made it a rule to cope with the latest, nationally, regionally and internationally. It is composed of an elite of politicians, scholars and high-profile veterans who have contributed to the 26 September and 14 October revolutions,” Saleh noted. In recalling the patriotic career of the PGC, President Saleh as the head of the party, said the ruling party played a significant role in reunifying the country in 1994 and “building giant infrastructure projects in field of roads, telecommunications, water and dams”. President Saleh attacked the political parties that “are aware of nothing but hollow rhetoric” calling them to follow the democratic pattern set by the ruling party in its internal reshuffles. President Saleh called on the Government to find substitutes to oil as the main source of income especially since the discovered meager reserves “will face depletion in 2012”. AA/AA SABA