Displaying items by tag: Corruption

The circumstances of the country today, are similar to the initial circumstances surrounding its establishment nearly a century ago. Although the global and regional, political and economic conditions are very different from that time, the Syrian will to restore unity of their country and rally it, is the same will the founding fathers had, including: Youssef Al-Azim, Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash, Saleh Al-Ali, Ibrahim Henano, Mohammed Al-Ashmar, Ramdan Pasha Shalash, Ismail Hariri, and their comrades. In addition to those who came during the stage of independence, including: Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar, Faris Al-Khoury, Khaled Al-Azim, and others, who rose above narrow affiliations and above multiple intellectual trends, and came together through a major general current, which is the patriotic Syrian current.

It has now been three weeks since the earthquake catastrophe. While the space the disaster occupies in the media and politically is gradually receding, the reality reveals every day new depths of the disaster, as well as tremendous pain and suffering that is crushing the bones of (survivors), if it is correct to describe those who were not killed by the earthquake as survivors.

Many promises are heard from time to time about improving electric power supply. However, reality proves the opposite of these promises, as rationing hours are increasing, and the need to resort to costly available alternatives is expanding further. 

The Ministry of Internal Trade and Costumer Protection has set the price per liter for sunflower’s seed oil through the “smart card” at 7200 SP, and with only one bottle per month per family. This has become a valid resolution to be applied starting from Saturday, November 06, 2021, and it has been rightly criticized by both citizens and experts (even in official newspapers) that this price is much higher than global prices and it has an exorbitant profit margin. In the following article, we try to calculate the profit rates of vegetable “frying oil” in two methods (or two scenarios) giving the fact that there are no enough official revelations regarding the data of import to Syria so that data to be sufficient for accurate calculation, so we can only resort to global publications and current statements. However, bot the most optimistic and most pessimistic calculations refer to profit rates that can only be described as full-fledged plunder, as through various methods we have found that the profit rate is no less than 100% and may reach 746%.

There is a striking phenomenon in the Syrian statistics in recent years, which is: a large increase in the proportion of GDP devoted for investment. That is, a larger part of the income produced annually goes to local investment, while a smaller proportion goes to consumption, whether private consumption that household consumption constitutes most of it, or public consumption spent by the government.

The peak of the epidemic curve moves between Syrian cities, leaving Damascus to As-Suwayda, Aleppo, and Tartous. Latakia, in its turns, remains awaiting the arrival of the peak.