Yemen - Monthly Market Watch, 2016

Market situation update for December 2016. Key highlights include:

• Prices of food and fuel commodities continued to stabilize in December 2016, but remained significantly higher than the pre-crisis levels.
• The cost of the minimum food basket further declined slightly in December, but 22% higher than the level estimated during the pre-crisis period. 
• Availability of food and fuel commodities have deteriorated in December 2016 due to reduced level of informal cross border overland imports and hoarding of essential commodities by opportunistic traders in anticipation of increased prices. 
• According to Alert for Price Spikes  (ALPS) methodology, in December 2016, normal situation prevailed for vegetable oil and red beans, while wheat flour was on alert status and that for sugar continued to be at crisis level. The ALPS indicator for the cost of the minimum food basket persistently maintained normal status.