Syria nets $28b in investments this year: Sharaa

Syria has attracted overseas investment totalling around $28 billion so far this year, President Ahmed Al Sharaa said on Wednesday at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh.

Sharaa said in a session attended by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman that Syrian laws have been amended to allow foreign investors to transfer funds out of the country.

“We want to rebuild Syria via investments,” Sharaa said, adding the world can benefit from it as a “trade corridor.”

An address by Sharaa to global finance, banking and energy leaders would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The president cited the figure while speaking in Saudi capital Riyadh at the Future Investment Initiative conference, where he was touted as a special guest during the ninth-edition of the forum.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman joined the audience at the panel where the Syrian president was speaking.

Since Bashar Al Assad’s fall, “investments amounting to approximately 28 billion dollars have entered” the country, Sharaa said.

“The opportunity in Syria is enormous, and there’s room for everyone,” he added in a bid to assure potential investors at the conference.

“I believe that today the world will benefit greatly from Syria. It will be an important commercial hub for transporting goods,” said the president.

Syria has begun the mammoth task of trying to rebuild its shattered economy, after over a decade of war saw tens of thousands killed, millions displaced and cities flattened.

For decades, the country was also unable to secure significant investments due to layers of sanctions targeting its government.

Earlier this month, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion.

Since the overthrow of Assad last year, Saudi Arabia has been courting Damascus’s new leaders, as the kingdom seeks to draw closer the country long dominated by Iran and Russia.

In May, the Saudi Crown Prince convinced US President Donald Trump to promise to lift Syria sanctions.

He also arranged a landmark meeting between Trump and Sharaa, a former jihadist who spent five years in US custody in Iraq.

In April, Riyadh vowed alongside Qatar to settle $15 million in Syrian debt to the World Bank.

Agencies