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Lebanon’s terrible first impression

by Zak Brophy
written by Zak Brophy

The odds are now stacked in favor of there being a treasure trove of hydrocarbons locked under Lebanon’s seabed. Nobody can be certain until the first field has successfully been tapped but it is certainly looking promising. So when the government held the Lebanon International Petroleum Exploration Forum & Exhibition in early July it is no surprise that industry players from far and wide were swarming like bees around the proverbial honey pot.

Representatives from the big guns to the small fry came to Beirut to sniff out what the government had on offer and they had two reasons to be interested. The first is the fact that Lebanon is sitting on the same geographical structures that have already come up trumps for Israel and Cyprus.

Houston-based Nobel Energy has been operating in Israeli waters since 1998 but in recent years has had two massive finds. In 2009 they successfully drilled a natural gas field of 237 billion cubic meters (BCM) and then in 2010 a 453 BCM field was tapped. With the subsequent discovery of a 226 BCM field in Cypriot waters the international oil companies (IOCs) must be salivating at the prospect of what else could be down there. 

This needs to be considered in light of the fact that the 2010 United States Geological Survey predicted that the Levant Basin Province — a geological formation in the Eastern Mediterranean extending from Syria to the Sinai — contains 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 3.5 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas.

The second carrot dangling in the face of the IOCs is the detailed and comprehensive library of seismic data within the 20,000 square kilometers of deep water in Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which has been collected by the companies Geco-Prakla, Spectrum Geo and Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS).

The prospective companies’ geological experts use this data to assess if there is actually anything down there and how accessible they anticipate it would be to drill and extract. The findings are promising and suggest a number of unexplored potential hydrocarbon hotspots including the Syrian Arc, the Levant Basin Province and the Levant Margin.

So with an attentive audience of bigwigs in town it was upon the government, and more specifically, the Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW), to show that it finally has some impetus and momentum to push the sector forward.

“Triggered by the success in Israel and Cyprus we cannot afford to idly sit by,” remarked Fadi Nader, advisor to the energy minister.

The MoEW, however, tripped at the first step. The man at the head of the ministry, Gebran Bassil, had announced triumphantly in the first week of January that the Petroleum Administration (PA) would be named within a month, as the decree approving the bylaws for body had been passed. Come late July and there is still no PA and without a PA the whole progress of the sector is stuck in stasis, as none of the other areas of the Offshore Petroleum Resources Law from August 2010 can be enacted.

The hundreds of delegates were told, of course, that the naming of the PA was just weeks away. However, many of the attendees I spoke to were not exactly filled with confidence, as Lebanon’s reputation for inter-party and inter-sectarian squabbling over who sits where at which table precedes the country.

What was more, the Ministry of Finance did a rather good job of revealing pretty much nothing about the kind of tax regime prospective companies could expect to be subject to — discussions regarding income tax, value added tax, built property tax, stamp and customs duties were at best vague, while the entire presentation had that distinct vacuousness many associate with “a waste of time.”

The ministry representative who had the unenviable job of filling the airtime told the expectant crowd, “in any case the taxation system in the whole of Lebanon is very soon going to be reviewed.” Which is funny because the new budget — the first since 2005 — passed by the cabinet just weeks later, was devoid of anything that resembled a review of the tax system.

Alas, the government regrettably missed a trick; the forum intended to convince industry players to partake in Lebanon’s embryotic energy sector but instead it gave them every reason they needed to question the wisdom of doing just that.

 

ZAK BROPHY is Executive’s economics and policy editor

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Simple measures to end Lebanon’s energy crisis

by Paul Cochrane
written by Paul Cochrane

Lebanon is going through one of its worst energy shortages in years. Even the most electrified part of the country, central Beirut, is experiencing more than the usually standard three-hour outages. Tires have been burnt in protest and people’s tempers are rising along with the mercury.

While wrangling at Électricité du Liban (EDL) over contract workers has caused interruptions of late and the state electricity provider has undoubted culpability in the chronic shortages, the rise in energy demand is also to blame. Last year, EDL produced the same amount of electricity as now — some 1,600 megawatts (MW) — while demand rose to over 2,300 MW. And what has caused more frequent and longer blackouts this summer is not the tourism season, weak as it is, but a surge in the use of high energy usage appliances.

One of the biggest energy guzzlers are widescreen LCD televisions, which have become so affordable to be almost ubiquitous, glaring away in so many homes, offices, restaurants and stores. For instance, a 40-inch LCD TV uses 240 watts per hour, and a 50-inch screen 400 watts, compared to 42 watts for a 28-inch LCD, and 87 watts for a conventional TV of the same size. While such wall-dominating screens are a drain on energy, watt usage rises again when coupled with air conditioning (A/C) units, which have risen in popularity in Lebanon as in much of the world, with global sales up 13 percent in 2011 on 2010. There are no accurate local figures, but in neighboring Gulf countries A/C accounts for a whopping 70 percent of annual peak electricity consumption and is expected to triple by 2030 to require the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day to power.

In Beirut demand for A/C is driven in large part by what is called the “urban heat island effect,” where buildings retain heat and warm up the surroundings, which then increases humidity. On average, A/C units use 900 watts per hour, although more energy efficient ones use around 800 watts when initially turned on, then consumption drops to 600 watts and can drop to less than 80 watts if set at a high temperature. By comparison, a ceiling fan, at full power, uses just 75 watts per hour.

So what to do about this surge in energy demand? Widescreen TVs can of course be turned off or watched selectively, but turning off A/C in the height of summer is not an option for most, especially if there actually is electricity. Pleas for people to turn off A/Cs and use fans instead will no doubt fall on deaf ears — even though fans can make the temperature feel four to eight degrees cooler — as once people have made the switch to A/C it is hard to go back. But more efficient usage of A/C is possible, as was demonstrated in Japan a few years ago when the prime minister, expecting energy demand to spike in the summer months as A/C usage rose, suggested workers don more practical summer outfits, of short sleeved shirts over suits and ties, and set A/C units at 26 to 28 degrees instead of the temperature of a warmish spring day of 16 to 18 degrees. Although it is hard to judge the success of the initiative, according to one government survey, 43 percent of employees did lighten up on the office A/C. Another technique called district cooling, using available sea water, could also offer a cheap and affordable option to knock off as much as 30 percent of consumption during peak hours.

Lebanon, however, is not renowned for successful collective efforts ‘for the good of all’. Even if the president, prime minister and speaker of the house all gave a joint press conference uniformly dressed in short sleeved shirts, shorts and sandals with a message to encourage people to turn off the widescreen and set their A/Cs at 28 degrees, it would be unlikely that people would follow suit.

But the private sector could be encouraged to adopt a summer uniform and lower the A/Cs. One, it would reduce overheads through lower electricity bills; two, companies could tout such a move as part of a “going green” policy of corporate social responsibility; and three, staff will be more relaxed in the office. Even a partial reduction in energy use would help to keep the lights, fans and yes, even A/Cs on for just a bit longer in what is going to be a hot and humid few months ahead.

PAUL COCHRANE is the Middle East correspondent for International News Services

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Banks caught in Iranian propaganda war

by Maya Sioufi
written by Maya Sioufi

"What else can go wrong?,” Lebanese bankers might ask these days as they flip through the news channels and jot down new additions to their “critical issues” list. When newscasts aren’t covering the civil war in neighboring Syria, commentators are wailing about volatile international markets and the European sovereign mess. What is more, record-low interest rates globally are limiting the range of investment options for Lebanon’s deposit-rich banks who are under intense international scrutiny, mainly spurred from Washington. Its all enough to keep a Lebanese bank manager up at night.

Tormenting their insomnia last month was the United States-based anti-Iranian lobby group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which publicly accused Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank, and the country’s private banking sector of laundering massive amounts of cash for Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. “The LBS [Lebanese Banking System] is a fraud” and “the focal point of the fraudulent Lebanese banking centers on BDL,” were among UANI’s quotes in major international news outlets. As part of this campaign, UANI is pressuring Wall Street and European financial firms to divest of their holdings in Lebanese sovereign debt, requesting that credit rating agencies re-rate Lebanese debt to “no-rating,” and calling for Lebanon to be cut off from the US financial system, which would cripple the country’s highly dollarized economy. UANI is not inept either, having successfully lobbied the European Union to oblige Belgium’s Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) to remove blacklisted Iranian banks from its network and thus restrain their worldwide financial transfers.

UANI’s board just so happens to feature Zionist luminaries such as Meir Dagan, former director of Mossad until 2011, as well as James Woosley, former director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, August Hanning, former head of the German intelligence service, and Richard Dearlove, former head of the British MI6 intelligence service. Fancy that.

The evidence supporting UANI’s claim that “vast inflows of deposits” are being washed in Lebanese banks is scant, with the group’s conclusions extrapolated from tenuous correlations that would amount to libel in any American court. The actual deposit figures — calculated by BDL, Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance and concurrent with those of international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — paint a different picture. In 2011, deposits grew by just 8 percent, down from a 12 percent growth in 2010 and 23 percent in 2009, and for the first four months of this year, deposits grew by just 3 percent. In response to UANI’s allegation, BDL Governor Riad Salameh pointed out that Syrian deposits held by Lebanese banks operating in Syria or in Lebanon have actually decreased since the start of the uprising in 2011.

UANI also claims that, for Lebanon, “the obvious risk of default is great” unless Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are supporting the “economic house of cards.” Had these ‘intelligence’ chiefs bothered to pick up a copy of Executive from time-to-time, they would have known better. For starters, default is less likely now then it has been in a while, as Lebanon’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, while still staggeringly high at well over 130 percent, has actually dropped more than 30 percent in the last five years. More importantly, the vast majority of Lebanese sovereign debt is held by local banks and not international institutions, and thus UANI’s call for foreign divestment of Lebanese debt has more bark than bite. Lebanese banks have admittedly voiced concerns about continuing to fund the highly indebted nation but, lacking better investment opportunities in international markets, sovereign paper still looks attractive, as does keeping the government from default. And, whenever there has been any uncomfortable up-ticks in yields demanded by the market to purchase Lebanese debt, the central bank has stepped in instead and bought the debt at lower rates  — not Iran, Syria, nor any other state or non-state actor.

UANI’s indictments against Lebanon are baseless and its assessment of the country’s vulnerabilities flawed. It is unfortunate that these well-placed propagandists will likely never have to account for their deception, while Lebanon’s bankers are forced to defend their industry from yet another assault on its reputation. Given everything else they are dealing with these days, however, UANI is a speed bump rather than a roadblock, an annoyance amongst matters of actual substance.

MAYA SIOUFI is Executive's banking and finance editor

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Economics & Policy

Q&A – Walid Daouk

by Zak Brophy
written by Zak Brophy

Walid Daouk, Lebanon’s minister of Information, was given a baptism of fire upon taking his post in June 2011 when his pet piece of draft legislation, The Lebanese Internet Regulation Act (LIRA), caused a storm of opposition and vitriolic denunciations, leading it to being put on the back burner. Executive met with the minister to discuss life after the LIRA and the promise and perils within Lebanon’s media sector.   

What was your incentive to develop the LIRA legislation?
I have not seen any legislation related to electronic media. What I had in mind was to protect the [news] websites. There are so many of them and they are of great importance. In the coming couple of years they will become more important than the newspapers. I said let’s not try to regulate, but fix it in some way. I had two ideas. The first was to put a label that will let us know where the website is domiciled. This would make it more credible.

The second part of the law was to help the websites get better services. What can you do if another website is able to steal your content as soon as you post it? So to protect the intellectual property rights of a website, I would say the registered website would benefit from the legal intellectual property rights in Lebanon.

Were you surprised by the backlash to your proposed law?
Unfortunately I didn’t lobby with the community because it didn’t occur to [me]. I saw there was a loophole in the law and I wanted a law that would benefit the owners of the websites. In my mind it was great, but unfortunately some people were against it and said that I am against freedom of speech. This is not true, in the second article of the draft law I said freedom of speech was fully respected.

Do you still think new websites, news or otherwise, should have to register with the government?
No, they don’t have to. The law is for those that want to. It is not obligatory.

Would Lebanese libel law also apply to the registered websites?
Yes, if a website is registered I would know where it is domiciled and therefore if people are illegally harmed by these sites they could take them to a Lebanese court.

Would content on social media websites be subject to these regulations?
No, absolutely not. This has nothing to do with it and you cannot control this.

Is LIRA dead in the water now?
It is put aside for now as there is a draft law that concerns all of the media and it is being studied within a media commission at the parliament. Definitely it is better to have everything within a greater code, but my idea was to address this loophole quickly. In any case it is optional. A media code in parliament in my opinion will take many years to pass, during which time we will still have the loophole.

With so many media barons represented in parliament, will this law pass?
It will but the questions are ‘if’ and ‘how’. It is so political. This is why I prepared my draft law to be quick.

On Twitter recently, you said you believed in “absolute freedom of speech in any blog or any media” but later tweeted “bloggers in some circumstances should refrain from telling the whole truth for the sake of the public and the community.” There seems to be an inherent contradiction here.
It is not a contradiction. I believe fully in freedom of speech. However, in some professions, such as lawyers or doctors, there is a ‘code of ontology’.

But doctors and lawyers are responsible to their patient and client. Who are journalists responsible to protect?
You can say whatever you want as long as what you say does not harm the public interest.

Who determines that?
There must be a code of conduct for journalists and the media sector but in Lebanon this does not exist. I am pushing for such a code.

Enforceable by law?
Definitely not. It should be by the media’s own adherence.

Most journalists don’t have access to the editor’s syndicate and there is no union or syndicate for broadcast journalists. What are you doing to formalize this profession and to ensure journalists can enjoy proper professional support and protection?
The syndicate was presided over by the same chairman for the past 50 years [Melhem Karam]. To join the syndicate was something pending his will. These days, however, we should not only leave the syndicate open for the ones who benefited from the time of Melhem Karam. Now we should open the syndicate for all journalists.

Does the ministry have a role to play in that process?
The ministry has a moral role and I am trying to push it.  I am going further, to have the syndicate become a federation, because now it does not include the broadcast journalists. We want everyone in the media profession included, such as the photographers and the sound engineers… I want to have a federation that is one body that is united and therefore stronger.

This is what you would like to see but have you seen any movement in that direction?
It is too early to say but the new syndicate was voted three weeks ago and I am pushing very hard in this direction.

Chapter 10 of the Audio Visual Law aims to limit political and corporate control of the media but is patently not enforced. Can the ministry do anything to curb the increasingly partisan and sectarian tone of the Lebanese media?
Unfortunately not, for political reasons I can’t even impose penalties against any defaulting media — that is to say media that is not in line with their conditions of contract, and unfortunately they are all breaching the law. However, I can re-equilibrate by improving the public media.

Previous cabinets wanted to protect their own [political] and religious media. No cabinet dared to strengthen the public media. They neglected it. I am saying it is now time to reinforce Tele and Radio Liban to give them their federative role.

This takes money. Where is this going to come from?
The government could get the money even if it will take a lot. I don’t have today the intention to be in competition with the private media, especially in television. But Tele Liban could have a niche where it could succeed, for example in education or local output. Commercial stations would not go there because it would not generate much advertising. Tele Liban’s news gets good audiences. We are around 4 percent, which  in my opinion is good. We also have the national news agency, which has correspondents all over Lebanon. We are the first to broadcast the news but the majority of the media takes the news from the NNA and then do not credit it.

Lebanon’s predominance in Arab media has dwindled in the face of huge budgets and assertive media coming from the Gulf and other areas of the region. On a policy level can anything be done to ensure Lebanon maintains a prime position within the regional media?
Yes. I hope to have a Beirut media center. At the Dubai media center the majority of the workers there are Lebanese.  The idea is to have a media city, or cities, in Lebanon where you can incorporate the studios and the newspaper buildings. I am confident we can attract these Lebanese ex-pats back to Lebanon.

Many of the TV licenses expire this year.  Can we expect new terms of contract or will the status quo continue?
Unfortunately the status quo will remain.

Why unfortunately?
Because everyone knows there is a breach in the conditions of contract, and unfortunately for political reasons nobody is being penalized for these breaches.

 

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Syria’s arms economy

by Nicholas Blanford
written by Nicholas Blanford

The prices of some popular weapons on Lebanon's black market have dropped for the first time since the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

Bearing in mind that the demand that drove prices to record highs was almost all from Syria, the recent dip appears to strengthen reports that Syria's armed opposition is gaining ever-greater access to weapons and ammunition.

The two weapon types that recorded the largest drop are AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. In March 2011, a good-quality Russian AK-47 or the Polish-manufactured version, known in Lebanon as a “Circle 11” from the stamp on the metalwork, cost around $1,100. By April this year, however, the rifle had doubled in price to around $2,200. The price climb for RPGs was even higher. A single grenade in March 2011 was worth $100 (itself a significant rise given that five years earlier it was selling for about $10). By April, however, it was nudging close to $1,000. Arms dealers were grumbling that they could not even find RPG rounds on the market.

However, since the beginning of May, both AK-47 and RPG prices have dropped to around $1,800 and $700 respectively. The cost of 7.62mm ammunition for the AK-47 also has declined from around $100 for a box of 50 rounds in April to $83 in June. Both AK-47 rifles and RPGs were the most commonly used, and sought after, weapons for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other armed opposition groups. The drop in prices suggests that the FSA is receiving a regular supply of armaments today, which has lessened demand in Lebanon.

It is widely believed that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have begun funding the FSA and that fresh arms supplies are reaching the fighters, mainly from Turkey. The New York Times reported in mid-June that CIA officers were in Turkey monitoring the flow of weapons to ensure that the recipients were not groups that shared Al-Qaeda's ideology.

The FSA also has had increasing success in raiding Syrian army depots and stealing weapons and ammunition, or co-opting Syrian army officers with access to arsenals. Indeed, the profits to be made from selling weapons have spurred Syrian soldiers to steal weapons and sell them on the black market, according to Lebanese arms dealers. That has led to some Syrian army weapons, including RPG rounds, to enter the Lebanese market.

The enormous profits to be made from selling arms has blurred political loyalties. There is a story presently circulating in the Bekaa about a member of a Syrian-backed political party who was in charge of the group's arsenal in his village. He struck a deal with a man from an influential family to sell the weapons to the Syrian opposition and they would split the proceeds. The weapons were duly sold across the border, but the second man then refused to share the profit with the party member. In revenge, the party member told the police where they could find the second man, who had a string of arrest warrants. The police laid an ambush and the second man died in a gunfight. The relatives of the second man then kidnapped the party member and he has not been seen since.

While AK-47 and RPG prices have declined, the cost of prestige weapons continues to climb. They include arms such as the AKS-74U, popularly known in Lebanon as the “Bin Laden gun” as it apparently was favored by the former Al-Qaeda leader. A Bin Laden gun costs $5,000 today, compared to about $2,800 a year ago. A Russian “Dushka” 12.7mm heavy machine gun is worth a staggering $9,000 compared to $3,000 in March 2011. Even that pales to the price of an American M4 assault rifle fitted with a M203 grenade launcher. Worth $5,000 in March 2011, today it will set you back at least $15,000.

 

NICHOLAS BLANFORD is the Beirut-based correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The Times of London

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Getting Beirut’s green back

by Ali Sayed-Ali
written by Ali Sayed-Ali

On a hot Saturday in mid-June, hundreds of young people across Beirut took part in a campaign to temporarily occupy key high traffic locations and replace them with ‘guerrilla gardens’. What took place was a welcome contrast from the tire-burning and road-blocking protests of late; instead, participants laid out patches of grass on sidewalks and roundabouts and picnicked under umbrellas to raise the profile of their cause for public green spaces.

Only two days before, the chief of the Beirut municipality, Bilal Hamad, held a press conference to announce the launch of the “Beirut is Amazing” initiative. Attempting to both respond to public pressure and direct the discourse, Hamad announced plans to rejuvenate the city’s parks. Unfortunately, the project is as uninspired as its name, and ignores an area constituting 77 percent of the city’s public green space — the Horsh Beirut. This park is a key issue of the guerrilla gardeners.

The Horsh — destroyed by fire in an Israeli raid during the civil war — is a sprawling 330,000 square meter urban park that until now is reserved for the exclusive use of those selected by the Beirut governorate. Only two years ago this historic piece of real estate was a non-issue for most Beirutis. That was until a non-governmental organization called Nahnoo (Arabic for ‘us’) rallied supporters and started asking the right questions. Today, beyond their media campaign, Nahnoo has compiled research, consulted legal experts and urban planners, organized public events and coupled advocacy with a policy focus to lobby cooperatively with decision makers.  The movement, however, isn’t without detractors — including many ordinary citizens from neighborhoods around the park. In typical ‘tragedy of the commons’ rationale, critics of the campaign say the Lebanese will not be able to collectively own such a pristine space without destroying it, pointing to threats as terrifying as barbecues, argileh, littering, and “immoral behavior”; thus, we must deprive ourselves of our public space in order to protect it. Hamad himself made these very arguments during a public forum organized by Nahnoo earlier this year.  The forum attracted an almost full house at Hamra’s Madina Theatre, where the majority of the audience was too young to remember the park in its glory days. Many were also angry. They saw the park’s closure as an act of exclusion, one that deprived them of a much-needed refuge from Beirut’s concrete jungle and a meeting point in a city that has one of the lowest levels of public green space in the world. Of course, it is not simply about green space, and the reasons given for the parks closure are superficial at best.

In a sectarian and segregated city the park takes on new meaning. Its triangular shape separates the suburbs from the city with barb-wired walls, keeping Christian, Sunni, and Shia neighborhoods apart. The question that many are asking away from the spotlight reveals an unspoken yet palpable sectarian turf war: “Who will control the park?” Of course legally, the municipality would be required to ensure the park remains clean and safe. On the ground, control is exercised differently. Groups of young men loyal to this or that political bloc could set up shop, hang their flags and effectively “take over” the space. Some believe that Sunni and Shia youth will clash and the violence could ruin Horsh Beirut.

Those leading the campaign for public access to the park understand the risks and realize that a sense of community ownership is necessary for its survival once opened. This is why they are planning to use the space to bring youth together, undertake public education programs and create an active Horsh Beirut neighborhood association to play a role in ensuring responsible use of the park. The tug of war over this rare publicly-owned green oasis in a slowly suffocating city represents a clash between two ideologies: those with a ‘fear-of-the-other’ worldview and a new generation that refuses to submit to prevailing stereotypes and are adamant about reclaiming public space for the people; while the former sees the park through the prism of perpetual conflict and eyes it with suspicion, the latter looks to make the Horsh a space for community and unity, and a source of hope for the future. In many ways, it is the struggle between continuing to entrench the trauma of the civil war and moving Lebanese society forward.

 

ALI SAYED-ALI works in democracy and civil society development in the MENA region

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A dwindling number of options

by Jihad Yazigi
written by Jihad Yazigi

Press reports that the Syrian government is printing money in Russia to pay civil servants salaries and to close its budget deficit have raised serious concerns.

Two issues — one political and the other financial — are at stake.

The decision to print Syrian bank notes in Russia has been known for some time, as the Minister of Finance, Mohammad Jleilati, announced at the end of May that his government was close to finalizing discussions with the Russian authorities for that purpose. It follows a ban imposed last fall by the European Union on printing Syrian bank notes; two EU members, Austria and Belgium, were among the countries printing Syrian currencies.

However, by going to Moscow, the Syrian authorities have only confirmed an increased dependency towards their Russian counterparts, with all the political consequences that this new state of affairs may entail. For months now, the consecutive rounds of sanctions imposed by the EU, the United States, the Arab League and Turkey have squeezed the Syrian government’s room to maneuver and increased reliance on Russia. Last December, for instance, the Central Bank of Syria announced that it had opened correspondent accounts with three Russian banks — VTB, VEB and Gazprombank — in a bid to avert new sanctions on its foreign assets by the European Union, which were eventually imposed in February.

Since then, there has been speculation that much of the country’s foreign reserves had been moved to Moscow, though a lack of transparency makes it difficult to confirm the location of these assets or their size (estimated at around $17 billion prior to the beginning of the uprising in March 2011). Other indications of this growing dependency include negotiations to have Syria join the existing Customs Union that consists of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, or the recent series of bilateral agreements in sectors as varied as petroleum, electricity and manufacturing.

As international calls for action to stop the bloodshed in Syria grow, Russia is likely to hold an increasing number of cards in its hand to pressure Damascus. From a financial and monetary point of view, however, the main issue of concern is not where Syria prints its currency but for what purpose. Indeed, while the story initially published by Reuters quoted Syrian bankers saying that the newly printed money was meant to finance the government’s deficit, the governor of the Syrian Central Bank strongly denied it, saying that the new bank notes would replace worn out bills, an operation the central bank “has been regularly doing since it was established just like every central bank around the world.” The government has also denied it was having any difficulties financing salaries and other payables; Jleilati recently said that the 2012 budget deficit was forecast at a reasonable 6 to 7 percent of gross domestic product, in line with expectations. The Minister of Finance has an obvious interest in downplaying the difficulties his government is facing, but while there is little doubt that the treasury is increasingly strained, it is difficult to claim that a collapse is imminent.

It will not be easy to identify the purpose for the government to print new bank notes. Since May 2011, the Central Bank has stopped publishing its monthly bulletin, which reported, among other things, the levels of money supply. What is clear, however, is that if the government were to resort to the printing press to finance its expenses, the risk is an immediate inflationary impact.

While the government had managed to keep a relative lid on the consumer price index for most of last year, prices have jumped in recent months, climbing 15 percent in January on an annual basis, and more than 30 percent in March and April — including a more than 40 percent increase in the food and beverages category. Relying on the printing press, therefore, risks increased social unrest.

However, the only obvious conclusion from this debate is that both from a political point of view and from a financial rationale, the options at the hands of the Syrian government are fast declining.

 

JIHAD YAZIGI is editor-in-chief of The Syria Report

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