Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi appointed former Finance Minister Mohammad Zammam as head of the Central Bank, based in the southern city of Aden. In his first presidential decree of 2018, Hadi ordered that Zammam replace former Governor Mansr al-Qaiti. The Yemeni President’s decision was welcomed Monday by Saudi Arabia and created an optimistic mood in the Yemeni financial circles. Observers hope that the new Governor could again control of the banking markets and restore Yemen’s currency, the riyal, which has lost more than half of its value against the dollar. The Central Bank was relocated to the interim capital Aden, southern Yemen, last September. In a post written on his Twitter account, Saudi Ambassador in Yemen Mohammed bin Said Al-Jaber congratulated Zammam on his appointment. “I hope that the appointment of Zammam as head of the Central Bank would help employ the Saudi deposit of $3 billion, support the Yemeni riyal and strengthen the economy to ease the burden of the people, caused by Iranian-backed Houthi militias,” the ambassador wrote. In January, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz ordered a deposit of $2 billion to be paid into Yemen’s Central Bank to prop up the weak currency and help alleviate the suffering of the people. Yemeni activists accuse and criticize the former Central Bank Governor of mismanagement and for not being present in Aden to head the bank. In addition to being a former Finance Minister, Zammam was chairman of the Customs Department in Yemen. He was born in 1964 in the province of Omran and holds a master and a PhD degree from two American universities. Following news of Zammam’s appointment, the bank’s Vice Governor Abbas al-Basha presented his resignation, saying in a letter to Hadi that the circumstances to continue in his post were no longer suitable.