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Syria
and the path to economic integration
Dr. Alimadi started his
presentation with a reminder about the history of Syria as a country who
systematically encouraged all unified Arab actions in the interest of the
power of the Arab nation. He explained that these efforts went in two directions:
·
To strengthen bilateral ties and
relationship with Arab countries in all domains.
·
To participate in all collective
efforts aiming at pushing for the implementation of Arab unity, and particularly
economic unity.
This nationalistic belief was behind all agreements
signed by Syria and the acts that try realizing this belief into reality.
Dr Alimadi explained that
Syria participated in all Arab economic commissions, establishments and
councils, in addition to being a member in all specialized Arab unions established
by the council for economic unity. The private and public sector companies
participate actively in the union of chamber of commerce and industry and
agriculture and the union of Arab banks and the Arab investment company.
Economic relationship between Syria and Arab countries:
Dr. Alimadi stressed the
importance Syria attached to the relationship with other Arab countries.
He described the establishment of joint committees to play the role of common
reference for discussing the development and improvement of bilateral ties.
These committees were initially presided by economy
ministers in both countries, and in some cases by foreign affairs ministers,
and finally committees were presided by prime ministers.
Trade between Syria and Arab countries:
The activity of import and export of goods in Syria
was estimated at 30% of the total national production. This figure does
not include crude oil and raw materials. If crude oil is added the figure
will jump to 44%, and with raw materials it would become 64%.
The lecturer emphasized the deficit in the food and
alimentary products commerce, as Syria exported about 20.3 billion SP value
and imported about 27.8 billion SP value of alimentary
products. Imports included sugar, tear, rice, ghee, and meat. He noticed
that Syria was dependant on external world for the importation of alimentary
products, raw materials necessary for industry, tools and machines, and
transport vehicles.
While the first trade partner with Syria was the EU,
seconded by third world countries, Arab countries came in third place. But
if we take oil out of the equation, as Syrian exports to Arab countries do not contain oil, we will notice that trade with
Arab countries would then constitute more than 63% of the overall Syrian
trade. Which shows clearly the importance of trade with
other Arab countries.
Dr Alimadi classified the
problems related to inter-Arab trade into three categories:
§
First: problems related to governments,
as some governments may take some actions aiming at limiting the access
to certain products to their local market in order to protect its national
products.
§
The second category is related to
the exchanged goods. The lack of any unified Arab specification for the
produced goods despite the existence of an Arab standardization body, creates several problems related to the differences between
the legal contracts clauses and the actual products, or the difficulty of
defining compliance requirements.
§
The third category is related to
people dealing with trade who do not know the commercial rules applied in
other countries and goods available there. In addition to the difficulty
of finding the names and addresses of importers and exporters, the lack
of big banks with branches in all Arab countries capable of opening letters
of credits and facilitate the financing of trade activities, and finally
the personal character of trade in the Arab world in general and the focus
on personal relationship instead of the work of companies and establishments.
The
need for competitiveness
The last major point in the presentation was the insistence
on the need of increasing the competitiveness of our local products as competition
is becoming extremely aggressive and does not target the gain of market
share only, but also the total elimination of the competitors. The lecturer
affirmed the need of the
adoption of Information and Communication technologies and the used of advanced
production techniques as a mean to increase productivity and reduce costs.
While reminding people that the open market gives the power to the purchaser
and does not tolerate deficiencies and lack of adaptability from the producers.
The lecturer concluded his presentation by a reminder
the great inter-Arab free trade zone which is currently being implemented
is the best way to realize economic Arab unity. He finally presented an
overview of the Syrian commercial balance for the years 2000-2001-2002.