Investment opportunities in Syria are great, promising, Minister al-Khalil says

Damascus, SANA- Investment opportunities in Syria are great and promising, Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Mohammad Samer al-Khalil said. “With the return of safety, a number of establishments began to enter the labor market, and there has been a need for a new investment law that takes into account a set of challenges, such as the areas that need development or that need reconstruction, and the presence of comfortable guarantees for each investor,” al-Khalil said in a press conference on Wednesday. Al-Khalil added that Investment Law No. 18 took into account the need for differentiation to direct investments to priority sectors and grant them exemptions and benefits, noting that the law organized the issue of money transfer with all its mechanisms (money movement, wages, compensation). During the current period, we are working to protect local production and rationalize import, and we succeeded in that, he said. The Minister of Economy pointed out that trade exchange with Russia has improved in recent years due to the diligence of Syrian and Russian companies, and this is an important growth and comes in second place after China. “Tariff exemptions from Russia and lower tariff costs encouraged export to Russia,” al-Khalil said. In response to a question about the existence of objective and non-objective reasons for the increase in prices, minister al-Khalil said that, according to the FAO, during last March, prices rose by 30% and justified them by climate changes and Coronavirus pandemic. He added “The increase in shipping costs and the prices of materials globally, in addition to the costs of transferring as a result of the sanctions, led to a rise in the prices of materials such as vegetable oils.”