RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is to deposit $200 million in the Yemeni central bank to help stem a slide in the value of the riyal that has caused food prices in the famine-threatened country to soar, reports AFP.

King Salman “approved a request” from Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to provide the emergency credit, the official Saudi Press Agency reported late Monday.

The oil-rich kingdom, which leads a coalition fighting Shiite rebels in support of Hadi’s beleaguered government, already deposited $2 billion in the central bank in January to try to shore up the riyal, which has lost more than two thirds of its value since the coalition intervened in March 2015.

The new deposit comes less than two weeks after the central bank, based in the government’s temporary capital of Aden, raised interest rates on deposits to an all-time high of 27 percent after the riyal slid more than 36 percent since January.