Aljazeera.net correspondents
Within the framework of the policy of reducing government support pursued by the Syrian regime’s government for nearly two years, the government recently asked holders of electronic (smart) cards to take the initiative to open bank accounts in the name of the cardholder within 3 months, in preparation for transferring support amounts to these accounts.
According to a statement issued by the regime’s government, the decision comes “in line with the trends of restructuring subsidies towards thoughtful and gradual monetary support,” which allows the government to liberalize prices and abandon their subsidies, especially basic items of bread and fuel.
Economists interpret the decision as the government’s abandonment of its duties to support basic commodities for Syrian citizens, paving the way for a significant increase in prices, under the guise of replacing support with financial sums for every Syrian family holding what is known as a “smart card.”
“Smart card” holders from Syrian families get the advantage of purchasing basic materials at the subsidized price, while Syrians excluded from support are forced to obtain materials, bread, and fuel at high prices.
The selection of families who were granted these cards is filled with many doubts and denunciations, as citizens accuse the regime’s government that the selection is random and ill-considered, and many families have been excluded from support and carry this card according to inaccurate financial and economic evaluations.
Transformation scenario
The pro-Syrian regime newspaper, Al-Watan, reported from what it described as “official sources” that one of the scenarios for the government’s gradual shift to cash support includes raising the price of a loaf of bread to 3,000 Syrian pounds instead of 400 Syrian pounds currently, which is the subsidized price (the dollar is equivalent to 14,800 Syrian pounds). ).
The sources added that the government will transfer the difference, amounting to 2,600 liras for each loaf of bread from the allocations, to the accounts of families covered by the support, after creating new bank accounts for them.
The sources also indicated that the share of support per family in Syria amounts to 8.875 million liras ($600) annually, resulting from the compilation of numbers and statistics provided by institutions affiliated with the regime.
She reported that statistics indicate that the total number of electronic family cards is about 4.6 million cards, and the percentage of families excluded from support was about 13%, equivalent to about 600,000 families.
Economic analyst Younis Al-Karim confirmed that the idea of lifting subsidies on goods in Syria is old, and now the steps to lift subsidies have begun to accelerate significantly, coinciding with the collapse of purchasing power and the government’s inability to meet the subsidies, in addition to the large amount of corruption, “whether from employees and warlords or from… Residents and workers, as a result of poor production of subsidized materials, raise the costs of subsidies.”
Al-Karim said – in an interview with Al Jazeera Net – that the new support mechanism is an imaginary and inaccurate fight against inflation, noting that the matter will lead to the liberalization of prices and allowing traders and influential people in the private sector to enter the markets.
Al-Karim added that the losers from the new mechanism are primarily Syrian citizens, as the citizen’s ability to access food will be reduced according to supply and demand, and thus he will be excluded from the food security equation and his suffering will increase.
As for the winners, according to Al-Karim, the most prominent of them is the regime’s government, for which the new mechanism will reduce the burden of pumping money into the markets, through an electronic financial block that will reach the accounts, and will not then need to print currency, and the matter will only improve inflation in the short term.
Warnings and fears
With the government announcement of the new mechanism, former ministers in the Syrian regime’s government refuted the negatives and obstacles that may prevent the success of this mechanism, especially those who experienced the issue of support and ways to transform it with the economic collapse during the years of war in Syria.
The former Minister of Internal Trade in the regime’s government, Amr Salem, warned of “runaway inflation, chaos, and an economic and social catastrophe, which will be almost impossible to repair,” if cash amounts are transferred to the beneficiary groups within the new government plan to move to cash support.
In a post on Facebook, Salem called on the government to stop the experiment “as happened by excluding people from support, on improper grounds,” stressing that the original project for cash support stipulates “setting an amount that fully compensates for the price difference and is placed on the card.” It cannot be spent in cash.
As for the former Syrian Minister of Economy, Lamia Assi, she called for an evaluation of the new support mechanism experiment before it is generalized to all subsidized goods, calling in a post on Facebook for bread to be the last commodity to be subsidized, and for the steps to be gradual.
