Since the Syrian People's Assembly approved the general budget for the year 2024, at the end of last December, the government has been subjected to a flood of sharp criticism, while it proceeds with its decisions aimed, as it says, at reducing the deficit, which this year reached an unprecedented amount.
The initial appropriations for the draft general budget for the current year amounted to 35,500 billion Syrian pounds, divided into: 26,500 billion Syrian pounds for current spending, and 9,000 billion Syrian pounds for investment spending, while the total deficit amounted to 9,404 billion Syrian pounds.
Syrian economic experts have asserted that “the government’s economic policy from September 2018 until 2023 led to a profound imbalance in the distribution of the national income,” adding that “this policy transferred public treasury funds from the hands of the state to the hands of a small group of financiers, representing 5 percent of Syrians. They described them as “an extremely wealthy society resulting from theft, corruption, and control over economic decisions personalized with a government signature,” stressing that the main money went to them, while 95 percent of Syrians languish below the poverty line.
Furthermore, they pointed out that the budget deficit in 2011 amounted to 547 billion liras, while the deficit in 2024 will reach more than 9,000 billion liras, in light of the dominance of mismanagement and planning, the complete absence of correct databases, a severe deficiency in disclosure and transparency, and the power of money stolen from treasury resources.
The government seeks to ease the deficit through a package of decisions that lead to the removal of subsidies, with successive decisions to raise fuel prices, which are now higher than their price in neighboring countries by more than 20 percent.
The second half of last year witnessed a 100 percent raise in salaries, which was immediately devoured by an unprecedented wave of price increases exceeding 250 percent, in parallel with a sharp decline in the value of the lira against the US dollar, bringing the exchange rate to 15,000 liras per dollar.
Syrian economic journalists criticized the government’s policy which operates with the mentality of the past. They said that increasing public treasury imports requires solutions from outside the fund, meaning “radical change,” and not the “easy, traditional solutions” that the government resorts to, such as gradually lifting subsidies, adopting a taxation policy that kills economic activity, and dramatically increasing the prices of goods and related services. In the context, they added that “the search for new solutions and ideas is not compatible with an environment that does not belong to the future, or minds that operate with the mentality of the past and the distant past,” considering this environment “generative of failure, impotence, and deterioration.”
At the beginning of this year, Damascus witnessed many meetings and economic events with the participation of businessmen, chambers of industry and commerce, and representatives of the government who engaged in open dialogues about economic policies and the need to find ways out of the growing crises, most notably a dialogue symposium called by the Federation of Trade Unions in Syria. Among the participants, economics professor, Shafiq Arabsh, said: “The umbrella of support was large. We covered under it all corruption, failure and waste. The support is an illusion, and the government without the support file will have no role left. We need to reform the wages policy in accordance with the Constitution.”
Average salaries range between 200 and 300 thousand Syrian pounds, which is equivalent to 13-20 US dollars, and according to local media reports, a family of 4 people needs per month more than 10 million Syrian pounds, which is about 700$, while a year ago it needed the equivalent of 400$.
The labor market in Syria has become linked to crises and wrong government decisions, so every crisis creates new job opportunities regardless of the legitimacy of these opportunities. For example, the electricity crisis created entire markets for equipment in which a large number of merchants participated. Inflation also contributed to the emergence and maintenance of the money counter trade. Another type of job opportunities has resulted from the government’s decisions regarding digital transformation, which legalized the existence of offices and people providing electronic registration and payment services in exchange for a commission, due to the raising of customs duties on mobile phones and the inability of the vast majority of Syrians to buy new phones.
This evolutions caused a distortion in the work market, and Syria loses, every day, dozens of university graduates, academics, doctors, engineers, and craftsmen due to immigration, as a result of increasing living difficulties.