DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Syrian government takes quick steps in raising the price of the subsidized materials, particularly fuel.
Over seven months, the government raised the price of gasoline four times, and it raised the price of each gas cylinder from 3,850 SYP (about one US dollar) to 9,700 SYP (about $2,80) and raised it more for industrialists.
Price hike of diesel runs parallel, the government raised its prices by about 161% for industrialists (from 650 to 1,700 SYP) and it raised the price of power service, referring to an approaching government plan to lift subsidy.
This issue is carried out in rapid steps rather than gradually without any change in salaries and wages that almost faded in light of the prices hike, which paralyzes the country.
Each time, after issuing a decision to raise prices, Syria’s Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister, Amr Salem, usually speaks about the importance and soundness of the decision.
“It is a difficult decision to raise prices of materials, but it is the right decision,” he wrote after raising the price of gas.
Meanwhile, his justification becomes worthless when he stresses, during a press conference, that “increasing the price of a gas cylinder will not speed the process of acquiring it due to the serious shortfalls of the material.”
The economical expert and researcher, Ammar Youssef, told a local media outlet that the problem does not lay in the shortfalls of oil products.
Mitigate the losses
He expressed his point of view, saying that the materials are “abundantly available” since they are available in the black market.
However, rationing the distribution of materials takes place due to “mitigate the losses resulting from subsidizing oil products.
“The solution lies in providing the material for the citizens on a continuous basis at cost price with a profit margin for the government to benefit of, instead of the black market dealers,” Youssef added.
Lifting subsidy raised public resentment among residents.
“If the next plan is price liberalization, this will not work unless the government improves the income levels,” Muhammad Saqar, a pseudonym for an expert in the economic field, said in an exclusive interview with North Press.
Governments of the world are concerned and responsible for securing needs of those living on their lands, he added.
“Manage issues yourselves”
“How can they leave millions of residents to manage their issues themselves since their wages can hardly secure them food for only few days,” Saqar noted.
“It is as if the economic authorities telling residents that they have to manage their issues themselves either through looting, stealing, or killing, things that terrorists do,” he said.
Things happen in the field of fuel and remittances “are in favor of smugglers and the black market whether on purpose or not,” Amal Hassam, an employee in a private exchange company, told North Press.
“Did the government, with all its institutions, fail to rectify the current situation?” Hassan asked.
“The livelihood conditions that the citizen is witnessing do not come within the government’s priorities, but the issued decisions can provide nothing,” she said.
Hassan called on the Minister of Internal Trade to change his way in addressing people’s sufferings “because his justifications on Facebook are worthless, since the result is the same, so it is better to leave people away from officials’ remarks.”
Subsidy
Those who follow up on the state’s general budget see that over the past years, subsidy allocations have decreased although the budget of 2021 reached 8,5 trillion SYP of which 3,500 trillion SYP was allocated for subsidy distributed to several sectors.
“It is better to address the issue of exploiting and misusing subsidy provided to different departments, but not to cancel or reduce it,” Secretary of Syrian Economic Science Society and former Assistant to the Minister of Industry, Dr. Fouad al-Lahham, said.
In conjunction with releasing these decisions, Syrians hear about the issue of lifting the subsidy, as Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister, Salem, made it frankly.
This will take place first by excluding those, whom Salem described as “do not deserve the subsidy so that their allocations will be provided to those who deserve it.”
Although he stressed that the government does not seek to lift the subsidy gradually, but it is clear that there are groups that receive it although they do not need it including trader, manager of a private bank, or major shareholders in the stock market and others.
“Those groups will buy materials according to the prices of the black market,” he added.
“Mr. Minister, before you assumed the position of Minister of Internal Trade, you used to preach and criticize your predecessors, but today you are behaving as they did, as they did not preach or criticize others,” the lawyer, Adnan al-Hussein, wrote a scathing comment by the Minister of Internal Trade.
“If your remarks means that each gas cylinder cost the state about 30,000 SYP ($8,70), as you have made, do not forget that the minimum wage before the crisis was more than $500, and a kilo of wheat was half a dollar, and the rate of annual price increase was 5%. I hope you will take this into account in the coming days…our people get fed up with these sermons,” he added.