Northern Syria – North-Press Agency
Dr. Ahmed Yousef
The Syrian economy, in light of the severe crisis is constantly exposed to shocks that lead to creating comprehensive disruptions in the performance of macroeconomic variables such as investment, consumption, savings, spending, the general level of prices and the ratio of imports to exports. As this economy has witnessed a sharp decline in the level of all the mentioned variables, and led to a state of stagnation in the Syrian markets, in front of the authorities' inability to provide solutions to address these unrest, which gradually expanded over the years of the Syrian war. It has had serious effects on the Syrian society, which hasn't witnessed in its recent history what it has been seeing in the past few years.
Perhaps what attracts the followers most in the deficiencies mentioned in the Syrian economy is the rapid depreciation of the value of the Syrian pound (lira) against foreign currencies, given the negative effects they seek from it on the level of living. The question that can be asked in this field is: Is the economic turmoil on the macro level that we are witnessing due to the deterioration of the exchange rate? Or is the exchange rate collapse caused by this turmoil? In both cases, what are the social repercussions on the reality of the situation in the Syrian economy?
In normal cases, many low exchange rates for local currencies against foreign ones can be noted, just as we note the opposite cases, and we didn't notice a firm correlation between the low exchange rate and the economic turmoil and its social repercussions, just as we didn't notice a firm correlation between the high exchange rate and the economic stability. Therefore, the strength of the economy in any country cannot be judged by the exchange rates of its currencies. Otherwise, the economists would have considered the Jordanian or the Kuwaiti economies stronger than the Japanese and Italian ones, and it isn't certainly something they mention.
The matter is radically different from this rule in the Syrian economy, as it is possible to judge on the weakness of the Syrian economy and its inability to maintain a stable price for its currency through the fall in the exchange rate of the Syrian pound. This is undoubtedly, due to a group of factors which led to macroeconomic disruption, through the decline in the agricultural and industrial production, the decline in the services sector at high rates, especially the tourism sector, and consequently the decline in the volume of foreign exchange diversion channels to local markets as a result of the economic exposure to the outside world, and entering into the vicious circle which leads to reproducing the currency collapse and the decline of gross domestic product levels, and stops the process of economic growth, which is reflected on society directly.
Whatever the goals that the economic systems work to achieve in the various data, if they aren't aimed, among other goals, to achieve social security by ensuring food security and developing the ability of the citizens to meet their needs, then the economy in this case confirms its bias towards achieving the goals of specific groups of society, where its interests contradict the general societal interest. This leads to the emergence of social issues at the forefront of the issues that the state suffers from, and it is directed towards more loss of social interdependence, which appears through the decline of indicators of the social development with the loss of middle-income earners in the society for the real value of their income with the decline of the value of the lira and the weakness of the agricultural and industrial production machine. The results of this case are reflected through:
- High unemployment rates: If the gross domestic product (GDP) declined from $60 billion in 2010 to $12 billion in 2019, this must be reflected on the levels of the workforce and lead to its decline, so we find that the employment levels have decreased from approximately 85% in 2010 to 45% of the total workforce in 2019.
Undoubtedly, this has negative effects on the average per capita income and the decline in the purchasing power of the citizen due to his inability to secure enough income to meet his necessary needs.
- High poverty rates: Poverty is a source of many social issues, and it represents the major scourge within any society, and its rates in Syria have increased from almost 30% to 90% of the total population. This phenomenon leads to a wide range of manifestations of social retardation and its causes at the same time, such as the educational dropout that is caused by the inability of the parents to bear the burden of education along with the need to employ children to contribute in securing the minimum levels of income in order to reproduce the workforce.
This is one of the most dangerous phenomena which reflected on the Syrian situation, given that it establishes a future in which illiteracy rates rise, after it was very low in Syria, and the matter doesn't stop there, but rather it exceeds to the spread of crime and the phenomenon of drug abuse and slave trade. The factors of unemployment and poverty provide strong evidence of social collapse due to the collapse of the economic system, which paves the way for the emergence of a society which lacks the moral values that the nations place on in the process of achieving economic and social development.
- Widening the chasm of class differences: the Syrian society was characterized by the sovereignty and expansion of the middle class, but it began to lose this layer with the escalation of warfare and economic cracks, by moving to the lowest-income class, the class whose members all live below the poverty line. We only see two layers in the Syrian social scene, one of which is velvet that lives in the ivory tower, and the other is impoverished, and most of whom were almost searching for crumbs to fill the gasp.
- The expansion of the external migration and the disintegration of the Syrian family: the external migration in the early years was only a result of a loss of safety and stability, and the prevailing belief was the early return to home, but the firing and prolonging war had led to a decline in the productive process and the subsequent absence of job opportunities and weakening safety factors. This has led to the expansion of the phenomenon of external migration and the disintegration of families, which gradually turned to the disintegration of the family situation, where statistics indicate that there are more than 5,500 cases of divorce for the Syrians in Germany in 2019, and the factors of family disintegration don't stop at the immigrants, but rather they include some non-immigrant families under pressure from harsh living conditions.
It wasn't expected that the Syrian society was on a date with the phenomenon of social disintegration and the crack of its structure under the influence of an intense internal war with its devastating economic and social repercussions. Today, the horizon of this society's return to stability and economic and social security isn't at hand, and between this and that, will the society see an unexpected miracle to reverse the negative equation on the Syrian territories?
Dr. Ahmed Yousef is an academic in economic development financing policies