Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad has doubled public sector wages and pensions as the war-torn country’s national currency spiraled further downwards, reaching a new low for the year.
“The national economy is in a clear state of instability, most notably rapid rise of the currency exchange rate,” Arnous told Syria’s parliament in a speech late last month, warning that financing government spending through debt and borrowing from the central bank is not sustainable.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitoring group based in Britain, said that hours after the decree was issued, fuel and produce prices increased, as public discontent over the dire economic situation worsens. “This increase is all but wiped out following the increases in fuel prices and recent depreciation in the Syrian pound,” Karam Shaar, nonresident senior fellow at Washington-based think tank the Newlines Institute, told the AP. “ will feed into local prices in a month or two fully.”
The United Nations estimates that 90% of Syrians in government-held areas live in poverty. More than half the population — some 12 million people — struggle to put food on the table, the U.N. estimates.In recent months, Arab governments that once endorsed Assad’s removal have restored relations with Damascus. Syria wasto the Arab League in May, after a suspension lasting more than a decade for its crackdown on protesters.
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