The Yemeni government announced on Tuesday that it was scrapping a contract with the US firm Powered Corp to build five nuclear reactors at an estimated cost of 15 billion dollars.
The decision was taken after "the publication of information that the company is not qualified to carry out the reactors' project," the cabinet said in a statement, quoted by the state news agency SABA.
It said the government refused to endorse a memorandum of understanding signed on September 24 between Powered Corp of Houston, Texas and Yemen's energy and electricity ministry.
Energy and Electricity Minister Mustafa Bahran said last month that a three-million-dollar feasibility study would be jointly funded by the Yemeni government and the US firm.
Yemen has suffered power shortages since the mid-1990s, with almost daily power cuts in major cities, especially during the summer, and experts say it currently produces no more than 800 megawatts of electricity.
