10 World's Worst Economies

Bangalore: The turmoil in Yemen has cost it more than a quarter of its oil production and helped place it at the top of this year’s list of The World’s Worst Economies. Forbes has come up with a list of 10 nations suffering with worst economies according to their three-year averages per-capita income and GDP, to smooth out temporary changes. Countries with low per-capita incomes, growing populations and high inflation do the worst by this measure.  A country’s natural wealth has little to do with whether it will land on the World’s Worst Economies list; resource-rich countries like Yemen and Chad make it solely because of their own mismanagement.

Yemen

Yemen tops the chart this year among world’s worst economies. Civil conflict and a stubborn Al Qaeda franchise have cut Yemen’s oil exports by a quarter and left the country struggling to feed itself. With per-capita income of $1,418 and an estimated adult illiteracy rate of 45 percent. Yemen ranks among the poorest countries on earth, in spite of the fact that Yemen has 3 billion barrels of oil which provide about a quarter of the country’s $63 billion GDP and 70 percent of government revenues. Attacks by al Qaeda and militant tribes helped trim oil production by 125,000 barrels a day last year amid widespread violence that also led to the resignation of longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh. The inflation rate has climbed up to 18 percent.

Country has 35 percent of employment rate, declining natural resources, a young population and increasing population growth. Yemen's economy is weak compared to most countries in the Middle-East, mainly because Yemen has very small oil reserves. Its economy depends heavily on the oil it produces, and its government receives the vast majority of its revenue from oil taxes. But Yemen's oil reserves are expected to be depleted by 2017, possibly bringing on economic collapse. Yemen does have large proven reserves of natural gas. Yemen's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant began production in October 2009.