10 Fils

The Yemen Arab Republic's coinage program of the 1970s was administered under the Central Bank established in Sana'a following the country's painful transition out of Imamate rule, which had ended with the 1962 revolution. North Yemen was at this point still receiving substantial financial support from Saudi Arabia and the United States, with monetary infrastructure being built largely from scratch after decades under a theocratic government that had actively resisted economic modernization.

The brass alloy chosen for this denomination was a practical compromise given the country's negligible domestic metals industry at the time.