Syria at the Crossroads: A Review and Comparative Analysis of Syria’s Current Trade Policy Reality

This paper grew out of three separate assignments I carried out in Damascus in 2009, embedded in Syria’s Ministry of Economy. At the time, the country was cautiously exploring closer engagement with the regional and global economy after decades of relative economic isolation.

That context matters. The work preceded the conflict that began in early 2011 and developed into civil war, profoundly reshaping Syria’s trade and investment policy outlook. The landscape that followed became almost unrecognisable from the one in which these assignments were conducted. This paper should therefore be read as a historical snapshot of the choices facing Syria at that moment.

A country considering its options

The task was to review and compare Syria’s trade arrangements and consider what they meant for its wider economic strategy. The analysis covered the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, the 1979 cooperation framework with the European Community, the association texts with the European Union and Turkey, the preferential agreement with Iran, and a draft agreement with Belarus.

I looked across these instruments at market access for agricultural and industrial goods, trade remedies, services, investment, competition, intellectual property and dispute settlement. The aim was to understand how the commitments fitted together, where they differed, and what implications they carried for Syria’s efforts to join the World Trade Organization.

A snapshot of a different trajectory

Looking back, the paper records a policy agenda that was overtaken by events. The questions we were working through in Damascus concerned the pace of opening, the terms of regional integration and the reforms needed to participate more effectively in international trade. The war transformed the circumstances in which any of those questions could be addressed.

Nonetheless, I think the work retains value. It captures the trajectory the country was on, the opportunities being considered and the practical choices involved in moving towards greater economic engagement. It also offers a point of reference for thinking about a course Syria could return to one day, even if the conditions and the choices would inevitably be different.

My hope is that closer economic engagement can again become a practical means of improving the lives and prospects of the Syrian people. This paper preserves a record of an earlier effort to think through what that might involve.

Read the paper

Syria at the Crossroads: A Review and Comparative Analysis of Syria’s Current Trade Policy Reality, Simon Lacey. Posted on SSRN on 26 January 2011; the document is dated November 2010 and draws on assignments conducted in 2009.

Download the full paper (PDF) · View the paper on SSRN

Listing photograph: Old Damascus, 2008, © Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0. Displayed with a square crop and colour filter.

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