Investment Boom Revives Northern Syria Amid Ongoing Risks

In light of the relative stability witnessed in the regions of northern Syria after the March 2020 agreement, the pace of commercial, industrial and educational activity has increased, and this has been encouraged by the establishment of two industrial cities in Idlib and Mare’ to receive industrialists, investors and craftsmen.

Local investment

In the face of the urban development movement, the relative rehabilitation of the infrastructure, and the import of electricity from Turkey , behind those huge commercial buildings there are still thousands of camps whose residents live below the poverty line, searching for work in light of the reduction of international support.

Many investors have headed to open projects in the northern region of Syria, a step fraught with risks due to the region’s absolute instability and exposure to bombing, in addition to the “invasion” of the market by Turkish and European goods that compete with prices.

Speaking to Media Net, merchant Hossam Abdel Aal said that despite all the foreign offers to open an electrical cable factory in which he has owned a trademark for decades, he only opened it in the Bab al-Hawa industrial city to supply the local market with its needs after electricity reached the region and demand for it increased, “and it is of high quality and at lower prices than imported ones, even though regime forces destroyed one of his factories in the western Aleppo countryside in 2019.”

Madin Rashid, the director of the “One Window” in this city, explains that their goal is to attract investments to the northern Syrian region as an emerging environment and a large consumer market. He said that they aspire to increase local production, which will contribute to reducing imports and creating a climate that encourages the displaced to return to their country to invest in it.

For his part, Hamdo Al-Jassem, Director of Public Relations at the Ministry of Economy in the Salvation Government, noted that the industrial city secured the employment of 15,000 workers directly and 10,000 others indirectly, and provided all facilities to traders and investors through reductions in initial fees and exemption of many food items from entry fees to the liberated area.

To meet the needs of the residents of the area and take into account the financial differences between them, Mahmoud Boland pointed out that he expanded his store to include medium and good types of clothing with international brands. Mahmoud, the owner of a clothing brand, moved his store from Istanbul after being relocated from Turkey to “Mawal Al Hamra,” one of the large shopping centers.

He added that after the problems that Syrians in Turkey are facing, such as persecution and deportation, many merchants have returned to invest in northern Syria, to open commercial projects that greatly increase job opportunities and secure the local market’s need for these goods, according to SNRH.

The two cities contribute to employing thousands of workers and securing the region’s need for goods, in addition to investment projects such as shopping malls and factories, and providing them with university graduates, especially from engineering branches.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Moscow on March 5, 2020, and reached an agreement for a ceasefire in Idlib starting the day after the meeting. A joint statement was issued by the two countries, which included an agreement to establish a safe corridor 6 kilometers deep north of the international road and the same amount south of it.

Stability and security

The management of Al Hamra Mall, one of the largest shopping malls in northern Syria, said that the relative stability and security prevailing in the region was the main reason that encouraged them to take such an important step despite the risks they could be exposed to from shelling by regime forces.

She added that they have been working in this field for many years and their goal is to build and invest in their country, and “this is what they have achieved in part by securing more than 700 job opportunities.”

The management of the “Al-Ghaidaq Project” stated that the productive projects have opened up job opportunities for a large number of young people. About 500 job opportunities have been secured in the mall and the same number in construction. It pointed out that 14 investors have entered the area, including Syrians, Turks and foreigners. This has increased job opportunities as most of the workers are chosen from the residents of the displacement camps to support their families in light of the decline in relief support.

For his part, Maher Al-Abdo, the owner of an electrical workshop, stated that two years ago his workshop consisted of only 5 people. With the passage of time and the increase in demand for work and the presence of productive projects, the number of his workers reached 35, most of whom have large families in need of daily expenses that they were able to secure.

On the other hand, the stability witnessed in the region encouraged an increase in commitment to education, especially among students who dropped out of school due to displacement and frequent changes of residence, as well as the lack of schools in the camps, the tendency of many students to work to support their families, and the suffering of the education sector from the cessation of support for the teaching staff and the costs of operating schools.

Initiatives

Omar Haj Ahmed, Administrative Affairs Officer at Masarat Initiative for Distance Learning, explains that they have been working for 5 years in cooperation with Microsoft to contribute to empowering local community groups and linking them to the labor market by providing a comprehensive knowledge service.

Because their initiative operates online, he added that they targeted the most needy groups, namely school dropouts, people with disabilities, and dropouts, especially those living in camps or in remote mountainous areas. 31,200 primary and secondary school students have benefited from the initiative.

In turn, the Minister of Higher Education, Abdel Moneim Abdel Hafez, pointed out that with the increase in the number of students registered annually in public and private universities, they moved to open a second public university called “Aleppo Al Shahbaa” alongside Idlib University, for which they also opened a second branch in the city of Salqin.

For his part, the President of Idlib University, Abdul Hamid Obaid Al-Khaled, said that universities have begun to offer theses in postgraduate studies and grant master’s and doctoral degrees, the latest of which was granting a doctorate in human medicine in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery.

Regarding the stability of foreign currencies and the exchange rate, the black market was in control at a time when the Syrian pound witnessed a rapid collapse. The decision to replace it with the Turkish lira by the “Monetary Agency” in the Idlib region was “a very important step in combating the black market to achieve some stability in the exchange rate and control inflation,” according to Mustafa Akoush, the financial director of this agency.

According to the statistics of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for the first half of 2024, about 5.1 million people live in the liberated areas, which is the population of northwestern Syria, 3.6 million of whom suffer from food insecurity, two million of whom live in displacement camps, and one million children are out of school, according to Media Reports.