| March 2010 |
|
Reshuffling the Deck By Obaida Hamad
More than a month on, Syrian economists from across the economic spectrum are generally cautious of viewing the dismissal of Tayssir Raddawi as head of the State Planning Commission (SPC) as a clear-cut victory for those who are pushing for less government involvement in the economy. Raddawi had become increasingly critical of the direction of Syria’s economic reforms over the past six months, charging that they were benefiting the elite and that social support services were needed to help those struggling to find their place in the new economic order. The more things change Kadri Jamil, a local communist leader and outspoken free-market critic, said he did not see the new appointments as hugely significant. Jamil said the country was facing pressing social issues and he hoped social justice would be the basis for future economic decisions. “We still basically have the same economic team, but we are facing new economic problems,” he said. “That calls for different thinking and I hope we will see a greater emphasis on social justice.” Likewise, supporters of a more rapid economic transformation in Syria say the recent reshuffle does not reflect a clear-cut victory for their way of thinking. Nabil Sukkar, managing director of the Syrian Consulting Bureau and a former senior economist at the World Bank, said the recent manoeuvring simply reflected a much-needed rebalance of old-style socialists and free-market supporters. Sukkar said the shake-up, if anything, favoured those wanting strong government control of the economy, rather than a powerful private sector. “I don’t think this means the pro-market reformists are in a stronger position,” he said. “This is about striking a balance within the governmental economic team.” The shake-up in the country’s economic team was sparked when Raddawi was dumped as head of the SPC via presidential decree on January 10. Raddawi lost his post after disparaging the country’s national economic reforms in the first lecture of the Syrian Economic Society’s 2010 programme in Damascus on January 5. Raddawi, a graduate in economics from the University of Grenoble in France who also holds a PhD in international economics from Sorbonne University, had been billed to deliver the highlights of the upcoming Eleventh Five-Year Plan. He used his address to voice his objections to the speed of the reform process, calling for a heavier state role in economic affairs. His supporters view him as an advocate of social justice in economic planning. In the months leading up to the speech Raddawi had clashed publicly with Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdullah al-Dardari, the architect of Syria’s economic reform programme and a key figure who has pushed hard to claw back government subsidies and open the public sector to private competition. Raddawi’s dismissal also followed the leaking to local media of a highly critical assessment prepared by the SPC of progress made under the Tenth Five-Year Plan in November. In the new economic line-up, Amer Hosni Lutfi has been moved out of his position as the minister of economy and trade and into the top post at the SPC. Lamia Aasi, the country’s ambassador to Malaysia who previously served as deputy finance minister under the ministry’s current head Muhammad al-Hussein, was appointed as the new minister for trade and finance, becoming the third female member of the cabinet in the process. Sukkar said Aasi was moderate in her economic views, being neither a member of the Ba’ath Party nor a supporter of an unconstrained free market. He added that the appointment of Lutfi as head of the SPC would help the commission in its efforts to finalise the upcoming Eleventh Five-Year Plan in front of a tight deadline. It is due to be completed by the end of this year and to be implemented at the beginning of 2011. Need to stress social justice Abed Fadliyeh, vice dean of the economics faculty at the University of Damascus and a policy advisor to the Ba’ath Party, said that regardless of who made up the economic team, it was important to put greater emphasis on assisting working-class Syrians. “The country’s political leadership wants to implement a social market economy, while the economic team wants to move faster to implement market reforms in both the private and public spheres,” Fadliyeh said. “By comparison, the social justice and social fairness aspects of reform are moving very slowly. Today there is no doubt that at the street level we feel the market economy more than the social justice dimension. We feel the effects of the market reforms, but we only hear words about the social side.” Muneer Haumsh, another leading socialist economist, said he hoped the new economic team would implement the reform agenda set by the political leadership which stresses a social market economy, not a free-market model. “Economic policy in Syria is decided by the political leadership and the economic team is there to carry out these plans,” Haumsh said. “All the talk that one wing is stronger than the other doesn’t add up to much because the policy of a social market economy was adopted by the political leadership. The decision has already been taken.” Haumsh said disagreements regarding the country’s economic reform programme arose because the country has yet to settle on a firm definition of what constitutes a social market economy. “We need to have one interpretation of the social market economy which has two targets,” he said. “The first is to provide a mechanism to run the private market and the second needs to be the achievement of social justice. Hayan Suleiman, a long time critic of pro-market reform, said he did not expect to see any dramatic changes in the approach to economic reform under the new team. “This economic team is not going to bring an end to the public sector,” Suleiman said. “Lutfi has said he supports the government’s economic role and the need to reform the public sector. We all agree on the need to raise the growth rate, lower unemployment and lower inflation.” |
1 February 2012
| |||
As the dust settles around a reshuffle of the country’s most senior economic decision makers, there has been much debate about just what it means for the future direction of Syrian economic life. Have free-market advocates won an important victory over their detractors? Will pro-market reforms now proceed at a greater pace?
