The Ministry of Economy has announced that within a week it will publish a compulsory price list for key commodity items as the Government tries to calm rising anger over the continuing increase in consumer prices.
On Sunday, following a meeting between representatives of the business community, government officials and union leaders, the Minister of Economy, Nidal Al-Shaar, set-up a committee tasked with establishing this list, although it is not yet clear what items will be included.
 
According to the text of the decision of Mr Shaar, the committee will take into account the costs of production - or import - of the goods, the foreign exchange rate, the cost differentials between different governorates across the country and “a reasonable” profit margin for traders. The list will be published in the local media.
 
The committee includes representatives from the Government and the private sector. “Offenders will be liable to punishments provided by the rules of the Ministry of Economy,” according to the text of the measure.
 
In practice, the decision is a return to price control practices that had been abandoned long ago after the Syrian government began to liberalise its economy in the mid-1980s. The move marks an additional step away from free market policies after a series of similar measures in the last year.
 
The continuing increase in prices witnessed in the market is widely covered in the local press and is creating growing anger among the population. Key food items such as sugar, rice, vegetable oil, tea, poultry meat, eggs, butter have risen by double digit figures in recent weeks. These add to the rise in the price of heating oil, nominally sold by the Government at a fixed price of 16 pounds per litre but which is in practice sold at up to twice that level as distributors capitalize on shortages.
 
According to official statistics, Syria’s consumer price index rose by some 15 percent on a year-on-year basis in January, from 5 percent in November. In practice, however, inflation is estimated to be at much higher levels.
 
According to Mr Shaar, who talked in a press briefing following the meeting, the factors contributing to the increase in the price of imported products include the devaluation of the Syrian Pound, the rise in customs tariffs and the suspension of the free trade agreement with Turkey, as well as the rising costs of banking and transport insurance due to the economic sanctions imposed by the EU and other western countries.
 
Meanwhile, the prices of locally made products are impacted by the increase in production costs due to power cuts and other shortages of energy products as well as logistical and supply difficulties across areas disrupted by the uprising gripping the country.
 
Mr Shaar also said that some “greedy” traders were trying to benefit from the situation. Oligopolistic situations in various business sectors are, indeed, largely blamed by analysts for part of the problem, only adding to a general distrust in the population towards traders and middle men.
 
The head of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce, Ghassan Al-Qalaa, who attended the press briefing of Mr Shaar, was forced to intervene and asked the media to stop putting the blame on traders. “We are not responsible for the increase in the value of the dollar,” he said. Meanwhile, BurhanEddine Al-Ashqar, also of the Chamber of Commerce, preferred to put the blame on...retail traders, “who play with prices.”
 
Mr Shaar admitted to the little leverage he had. “We are no more in 2000,” he said, referring to a period when the state still had a strong role in regulating the economy.