2023-05-30 05:38:12
The prices of most food and consumer commodities rose in the markets of the Syrian capital, Damascus, following the exchange rate of the dollar once morest the pound crossed the barrier of 9,000 pounds for the first time since the beginning of the Syrian war. Consumption.
Khalil Muhammad (42 years old) works in the Zablatani market in Damascus as a day laborer, and he told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “the wages for a full working day are not sufficient for one cooked meal without meat.”
The man in his forties, who lives with his family in a rented room in one of the capital’s slums, explains in his speech that the prices of food and consumer goods rise on a daily basis in light of his income remaining constant and his inability to work in another profession, which forced him to reduce his consumption of goods to its minimum limits, in addition to Completely eliminating red meat.
The head of the Syrian Regime’s Workers’ Union, Jamal al-Qadri, said in press statements this May that “the minimum wage is no longer sufficient for the employee for one day,” calling on the regime’s government to subject the salary and wages system to a radical amendment and to reconsider all legislation related to the labor market. .
The average monthly wage in Syria, which is regarding 100 thousand Syrian pounds, covers less than a quarter of the food needs of families, according to the World Food Programme, which means creating additional suffering for all families in light of the waves of high prices that the Syrian markets suffer from in various cities.
Thousands of families in regime-controlled areas fear the loss of their purchasing power, not its weakness, as regarding 12 million Syrians do not know where they will get their next meal from, and 2.9 million people are at risk of slipping into hunger, according to the World Food Program, which warned of reaching hunger rates. In Syria, record levels.
Most foodstuffs recorded new price hikes due to the collapse of the lira, as the price of a kilogram of red meat rose to 96,000 lira, rice to 18,000 lira, and sugar exceeded 10,000 lira. On the other hand, most shopkeepers resorted to raising the prices of their goods to more than the price of the dollar on the black market in order to avoid new fluctuations in the exchange rate of the lira that would result in an inevitable increase in commodity prices, as reported by a number of merchants in Damascus to The New Arab.
Salim al-Sheikha, owner of a grocery store in the Damascus neighborhood of Bab Srijeh, told The New Arab: “We used to buy goods at a wholesale price and sell them at a reasonable profit, but the fluctuations in the exchange rate forced us to increase the profit margin for fear of losing the ability to continue working.”
The Central Bank of Syria, with its publication on customs and aviation, raised the price of the customs dollar to 6,500 pounds instead of 4,000 pounds, in raising prices, according to al-Sheikha. A new wave of price hikes for all commodities.
For his part, Younis al-Karim, the executive director of the Economist Platform, Younes al-Karim, believes that the instability of the Syrian pound’s price, despite the Central Bank’s measures, including the daily exchange bulletins, is due to laws that still prevent the circulation of the dollar, such as Decree No. 3 and the issue of the list of imports and the pledge to cut off exports.
Al-Karim considers that the monetary regime’s attempts to make the exchange rate of the lira in the regular market parallel to its price in the black market have no effects on the value of the local currency, explaining that this policy, i.e. “nominal exchange bulletins”, eased the burden only on state institutions that sell at prices lower than Cost price.
In his interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Al-Karim confirms that the policy of the daily exchange bulletins has no effect on the decline in food and consumer prices.
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