Boston.com / Business / Land of economic unrest
DAMASCUS -- In the cavernous Al Hamadiyyeh market in the heart of Old Damascus, businessman Ayman Abdullah surveyed a cluster of run-down shops and envisioned a four-star hotel, complete with a courtyard and fountain.
"I'll have to buy out the shopowners, of course," Abdullah said.
All Abdullah needs is a loan, but there is not a banker in Syria willing to extend him credit. That's not because of concerns that Syria may be next on a US list of countries due for regime change, or because of the increasingly troubled US occupation in Iraq or violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
The problem is there are no private bankers in Syria -- no private banks, period.
"We have no banks, so we have no capital and no investment," said the 32-year-old Abdullah, who holds a master's degree in business administration from a university in Lebanon and is fluent in Arabic, English, and French. "This is strangling our economy."
Fascinating! But what I don't find here is any clear sense of responsibility. nor any sense of a solution. In fact, for me this article opens new doors to new and depressing questions that have received relatively little attention in the press. Seems to me the popular focus has been on religious extremism, but that might be an effect rather than a cause of significant problems? Questions:
1. How much of this problem is due to colonialism? (If a lot of it is, then that raises the responsibility of colonial powers to correct it.)
2. How much of it is due to lack of infrastructue and education?
3. If the oil money - and little is said here of the oil exports of several countries - if the oil money had been applied to building the countries rather than building palaces would things be significantly different? (The moral answer may be obvious, but the economic one isn't - at leats to me.)
4. How much of the problem is due to Communist/Socialist policies?
No mention is made here of Saudi Arabia, but what I know of the sagging Saudi economy the general thrust of the article seems to fit.
Posted by: Greg Stone at August 25, 2003 05:36 AM