The Need to Reform the Public Sector Wage Bill

This Policy Brief addresses the issue of Yemen’s bloated public sector. Amid consistently large budget deficits, the inflated public sector wage bill is fiscally unsustainable and threatens to undermine economic recovery and future stability in Yemen. Recognizing the multiple challenges of reforming the public sector, even in a stable country, the recommendations brought forward in this Policy Brief are addressed to the post-conflict government, which should: conduct an assessment to evaluate the conflict-driven growth of the public sector payroll; reduce administrative corruption through the biometric registration of all public sector workers; and develop a strategy to demobilize and reintegrate fighters into society without absorbing them into the public sector. Further recommendations in the full text.