In recent weeks, new statements and indications have emerged regarding the printing of new banknotes and their introduction into circulation starting early next year. This issue can be considered an economic and social time bomb with a direct impact on the lives of Syrians, requiring swift action before it turns into a social catastrophe with unpredictable consequences.
The recently announced decision to raise electricity prices by the Ministry of Energy was nothing less than an explicit declaration of moving in the exact opposite direction of the interests of Syrians. It is a continuation of a methodology that facts have repeatedly proven leads only to ruin: raising prices before genuinely raising wages, and burdening the poor with the cost of what has been destroyed by flawed policies accumulated over decades, which continue today.
The issue of the extremely difficult living conditions of more than 90% of Syrians is at the top of the list of national priorities. This is not only from a humanitarian and moral perspective, both of which are sufficient in themselves, but also from a patriotic perspective, civil peace preservation perspective, and the need to prevent harmful foreign interventions and ambitions of division and sabotage that are trying to enter through every possible loophole, and behind which stand multiple sides, mainly the warlords, the major corruption figures, and the “Israeli” enemy, which does not hide – with its usual impudence – its blatant intentions to work on dividing Syria.
With the end of the first quarter of 2023, and since before the beginning of the month of Ramadan, Syrians have directly witnessed significant increases in the prices of various necessary basic commodities. The average cost of living for a Syrian family of 5 has increased according to Kassioun index for the costs of living to jump to more than 5.6 million Syrian pounds (the minimum has reached 3,546,083 Syrian pounds). All this is happening while the minimum of wages (92,970 Syrian pounds, i.e., less than $13 a month) is still very meager and insufficient to actually cover anything from the basics of life.
Like its predecessors, the state's general budget for 2022 reflected the country's deteriorating situation on all fronts. The factors of war and economic sanctions, and, before this and that, the government policies followed for decades, left an economy afflicted with a heart attack and an infrastructure paralyzed in most of its sectors, which was reflected in a significant decline and deterioration in all indicators of Syrian economic performance.
Hardly anyone argues today that official wages in Syria are no longer able to cover some of the actual costs of living. We have explained on several occasions on the pages of this newspaper that the State apparatus in the country has long stopped paying actual wages to its employees, whose number in 2020 was estimated by the Central Bureau of Statistics at 1,595,475 workers, out of 5,726,290 workers in general.
Talking about the global food crisis is no longer just speculations and warnings done by some, as the countries of the world, the countries of the global south in particular, have made real steps in this direction. At the Syrian level, where we are already suffering from food insecurity, the country is effectively left to the unknown, to be a prey between the jaws of the global food crisis, which is still not clear where it is headed yet. In addition, internal plunderers are ready to seize any crisis that increases the accumulation of wealth above their already accumulated wealth.
The catastrophic economic and social repercussions of the Syrian crisis have affected society in general, but they have affected the situation of Syrian children more deeply, entrenching them as the most vulnerable and fragile group in the country. Part of this group was forcibly pushed into the labour market in order to contribute to their families efforts to fill the huge difference between the minimum costs of food for the family and the minimum of wages. At the same time, most of these children live under conditions that threaten them with consequences throughout their entire lifetime.
With each passing day, and with every additional complication and blow to the global economy, it is becoming increasingly clearer that only the countries that have maintained and developed their production systems – particularly the real production in industry, agriculture, and others – are the ones able to be resilient and ensure the living conditions of their people considerably, and away from the corny use of slogans about resilience.
Last Thursday, April 21, Legislative Decree No. 4 of 2022 was issued, which provides for the disbursement of what is called a «grant», with a lump sum of 75 thousand Syrian pounds for civilian and military workers, and pensioners, provided that this «grant» is disbursed only once.
