A Presidential decree formally established last week the Syrian Electronic Payments Company, an entity that will be tasked with building and managing the infrastructure for an electronic payment system in the country.
According to the decree, enacted on March 29, SEPC will be entirely owned by the State but regulated under the Company law. In other words the company will be me managed in a manner similar to a private sector company.
 
SEPC will build the infrastructure for electronic payments in the country and be responsible for ensuring that it meets economic and development goals as per the text of the decree.
 
The company is to be managed by a Board made of experts in the IT, economic and financial fields. They will all have to be Syrian nationals.
 
Syria has an underdeveloped information technology sector and no existing electronic payment infrastructure.
 
Meanwhile, Syria ranked 127th out of 190 countries in the world in the latest annual electronic development index published by the United Nations. The index attempts to provide a picture on the use of electronic services by the Government to serve the public and is produced every two years.
 
Syria improved 6 ranks from 2010 when it ranked 133rd. Out of 16 Arab countries, Syria ranked 11th, the countries ranking lower being Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Sudan and Yemen.
 
The index is composed of three sub-indices on the availability of online services and tools by the government, on the telecommunication infrastructure and on human capital.
 
The first sub-index is based on a four-stage model measuring the sophistication of web services to citizens.
 
The second sub-index is a composite weighted index of six primary indices relating to the penetration of PCs, internet users, online use, mobile phones, telephone lines and TV sets.
 
The third sub-index relies on the UNDP ‘education index’ which is a composite of the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio with two third weight given to adult literacy and one third to gross enrolment ratio.