Syrian Minister of Economy and Trade, Amer Loutfi has said that Syria is working to build a "competitive free economy" with strong participation of the private sector.
During a symposium on "Growth and Economic Change in Syria," which was organized by the Ministry of Economy and Trade in cooperation with the World Bank, Loutfi added on Wednesday that the "mechanisms of the market economy are being drawn so that a wide margin of economic freedom will be available to help the individual economic initiative to succeed and this always comes from the private sector."
According to SANA, he pointed out that the state intervention will be intelligent in creating the conditions for the success of the private sector in building the national economy.
According to him, the government is also working on a banking system and on the monetary system to maintain a stable exchange rate in order to allow the private banks to finance the economic projects properly.
For his part, Vice President of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa, Christian Portman said that Syria is still facing challenges in spite of the development in various fields because the economic transformation has no ready-made solutions. Thus, Syria should utilize the expertise of other countries to determine its own strategies according to the available potentials.
He expressed readiness to extend support to Syria with numerous studies that help in detecting the points of strength and weakness in the Syrian economy.
For his part, a World Bank expert, Moustafa Nabulsi said that Syria needs to create between 1.5 to 3 million job opportunities during the next ten years. He stressed that Syria also needs to act quickly in the direction of economic transformation in order to face the run out of oil that would weaken the income.
