ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – Owners of stone factories in Sheikh Saeed neighborhood, south of Aleppo, north Syria, say that government checkpoints and customs patrols impose royalties on imported and exported materials to their factories, which negatively affects their work and production.
Four checkpoints of the Fourth Division are spread across the Sheikh Saeed neighborhood, and impose fees on the materials regardless of their destination and quantity, according to the owners.
Big sums
Before the Syrian crisis, the Sheikh Saeed neighborhood included more than 200 factories for manufacturing stones, granite, and marble in Aleppo.
That number is now down to less than 50, after most of them stopped working or were destroyed during the battles between government forces and armed groups.
Diab Hamami, a stone factory owner in the Sheikh Saeed neighborhood, said that transporting a shipment of 30 tons of stones from quarries to factories now costs them 500,000 Syrian pounds (SYP).
He referred that they pay 300,000 SYP as a royalty for the government checkpoints spread on the road, and 200,000 SYP for transporting the shipment.
Owners of stone factories transfer stones from quarries in the northern countryside of Aleppo, especially al-Tamoura region, to Sheikh Saeed.
The distance between quarries and factories does not exceed 30 kilometers, “but we pay big sums of money, which have become a burden on our work and production,” according to Hamami.
The Aleppo stone industry is among the most important and ancient industries of the city, as it was famous for its white stones.
Royalties paid
Abdo Taha (a pseudonym), a marble and granite factory owner, said that customs patrols come daily to the neighborhood “under the pretext of examining customs data for granite and imported marble, and confiscating smuggled materials to impose fines.”
“This pretext is a means to take big bribes from factory owners, and whoever does not pay, all his goods are confiscated under the pretext that they are smuggled from Turkey,” he added.
The royalties sometimes exceed one million Syrian pounds. “Most of us prefer to pay the sums for fear of the confiscation of all of our materials, which amount to 200 million Syrian pounds minimum,” he pointed out.
One meter of good quality marble in Aleppo exceeds 70,000 SYP.
“The smuggled goods, if found, are transferred to the government military and security authorities,” he referred.
Omar Salih (a pseudonym), a stone and granite factory owner in the Sheikh Saeed neighborhood, said they pay at least 15,000 SYP in royalties for any small truck loaded with materials.
Owners of middle-shipment trucks pay 50,000 SYP, whereas the big trucks owners pay 250,000 SYP.
These fees, that usually the customers and the factory owners bear equally, “hinder the work in our factories due to low demand for buying stones and building supplies,” Salih added.
He believed that it also hinders the limited reconstruction efforts that the residents conduct in some destroyed neighborhoods of Aleppo.