Conflicts push Syrian economy backward 40 years

The conflicts in Syria have created a catastrophic situation at the humanitarian and development levels as the country has lost more than 40 years of economic growth, a recent report issued by the private Syrian Center for Policy Research said. The nongovernmental center said in its report that Syria lost more than forty years of economic growth and capital accumulation with the level of per capita income declining to nearly its level at the end of the 1960s. The productive sectors have been largely destroyed, the report said, pointing out to record levels at the deficit of the trade balance, the deficit of payments, the increased budget deficit to more than half of GDP, and public debt that exceeded 125 percent of GDP, and the unemployment rate that has gone up by 50 percent. The report, citing former general director of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Shafiq Arbash, classified the losses of the Syrians over the past three years of crisis depending on their possible dangers on the country's future. He said that the most serious loss was the brain drain of intellectuals and most qualified persons to better-paid jobs in regional countries or oversees, adding that the second serious loss was the destruction of most of the components of the economic sector, mainly the destruction that befallen the northern Aleppo province, which was deemed to be Syria's economic capital. Arbash said that the third loss is the fact that a large portion of the current generation has lost its chance in education as a result of the internal and external displacement. Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi unveiled in a recent statement that the size of damages caused by the Syrian war has amounted to 4.7 trillion Syrian pounds (30 billion U.S. dollars) indicating that the government allocated 50 billion pounds in 2014 to compensate for damages. The Ministry of Industry prepared lately a memorandum presented to the government on the current condition of the Syrian industry and what the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation in the post-crisis period require. The destruction of the country's infrastructure during clashes between government forces and rebels battling to overthrow the Syrian state have devastated the industrial sector, which posed the backbone of the Syrian economy, a matter which led to the closure of an increasing number of industrial establishments of small and medium enterprises, in addition to the loss of thousands of workers of their jobs. Syrian industry minister Kamal el-Deen Taemeh told local media that the losses of the industrial sector amounted to 336 billion pounds (2.2 billion dollars) since the start of the crisis in the country nearly three years ago. The minister said that the losses of the private sector totaled 230 billion pounds and those of the public sector at 106 billion pounds. The memo of the industrial ministry indicated that the process of reconstruction and the building of a strong industrial base in Syria in the public and private sectors require initially about 1, 583 billion Syrian pounds (around 11 billion dollars). It said that the number of the affected private industrial establishments in Aleppo alone has reached more than 720 facilities. Economists said the economic recession have bloated budget deficit and that inflation was running at 70 percent in 2013, warning that the economy will further be ravaged unless the government takes drastic measures to help it recover once again. Western sanctions imposed on Syria have slashed its export earnings from oil, giving the central bank less firepower to support its currency that plunged to a record low against the dollar, from 47 pounds before the crisis to 155 pounds.