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Syria put on investment radar of UAE
ABU DHABI — The visit of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to Syria will help stimulate investments into the once-closed economy, said analysts.
Syria has woken up to new global realities of economic liberalisation and economic reforms under the leadership of President Dr Bashar Al Assad, who has introduced new liberal laws that have made the nation attractive to foreign investment, in recent years.
Free market
Once a closed economy and heavily influenced by the erstwhile Soviet Union, Syria is now moving fast on the road to free market, with companies like Telenor, a telecom giant making international presence.
Primarily, an agricultural country, Syria has huge oil and gas reserves that could be extracted by much-needed foreign investment, says Mohammed Karkuti, an Abu Dhabi-based economic analyst.
He said Shaikh Mohammed’s visit will certainly put Syria on investment radars of the decision-makers in the UAE, who were eager to make investments in the right projects, with a tilt towards the under-developed region.
The UAE and Syria have strong relations spanning over decades. The trade balance had always been in favour of the UAE, for its higher volumes of exports, being a re-exporting nation.
Major imports
The major imports from Syria are dominated by cotton, textiles, fruit and vegetables, while exports and re-exports from the UAE include food, fish products, machinery, consumer goods etc.
“The UAE investors have already shown interest in the banking, tourism, industrial sectors,” said Mohammad Karkuti. “The scope of investment is enormous and wide-ranging, since banking and financial sector is new to Syrians. There is future for UAE's financial sector to expand their operations there and introduce modern banking products to the country.”
Sizeable investment
The hydrocarbon sector is another area, where Syria has attracted sizeable foreign direct investment from Iran, Venezuela and Malaysia, who are setting up two oil refineries to enable the country to increase its exports of petroleum commodities for earning foreign exchange.
The large UAE companies can also look into this sector which needs heavy investment, said Mohammed Karkuti.
He suggested that UAE investors, particularly the large real estate developers, should tap the opportunities for real estate and infrastructure, which needs massive expansion at the moment.
There are also reserves of phosphates another export earner, iron ore and natural gas.
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