| inbluevt | Date: Wednesday, 2013/08/14, 8:15 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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AS SYRIA’S 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad turned into a civil war, business in Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two biggestcities, plunged and inflation soared. Early this year, when rebels took over the northern city of Raqqa—and with it a good chunk of Syria’s oil and agricultural land, two main sources of government revenue fell into rebel hands. On the battlefield the regime has held its own; when it comes to financing the fighting the situation is less clear.
Unemployment has balooned to 60% and government coffers are empty; oil production is down to 20,000 barrels per day, from 380,000. Oil sanctions and sabotage have cost the government at least $13 billion by its own reckoning. Farming, trade and manufacturing are running at less than a third of pre-war levels. The Syrian pound has tumbled from 47 to the dollar when fighting broke out to around 250 today. In Beirut UN experts reckon that 19% of Syrians now live below the poverty line,
compared with less than 1% before the war.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Wednesday, 2013/08/14, 8:17 PM |
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