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Anticpations - Coggle Diagram
Anticpations
Banks
There is growing interest in supporting the reconstruction of Syria's banking network, that had been deeply tied to the Assad. In August, the World Bank agreed $100mn grant to support access to, safety and transparency within the banking sector.
The state of the Syrian banking sector through its small banks, out dated payment systems, lack of intregty and a lack of stability increase the costs of transactions and limits the country's access to domestic and international finance (including domestic-international finance through remitences).
Banking is key to rebuilding a functioning Syrian economy as it will enabled the devleopment of Syrian capital markets through bank loans and investments (something key to economic development) and enable people to save.
Rebuilding a strong and effective banking sector could be one of the areas the UK is best positioned for. UK finance is our most successful industry and a sector we are world leaders in alongside a growing fintech sector and a strong central bank. The UK could funnel both our finance sectors expertise and money into supporting the rebuilding of the Syrian banking sector.
The Bank of England could provide training, support and oversight as the Syrian Central Bank is rebuilt, helping it to provide effective transparency mechanisms. These support would need to be focused on developing a banking sector that breaks from the Assad era of politically aligned actors controlling banks and supproting their allies through preferential loans.
The UK private banking sector can be incentivised to provide training and support to Syrian banks on how to modernise and make use of new technogoloy. This may involve joint ventures between UK banks and financial service providers in Syria, but this investment would have to be strongly monitored and build around a framework of the joint venture ending when the banks are in a psoition to go public.
The non-investment support could be incrouged with policies such as offering higher caps on bankers' bonuses to those support this training. This inaitive could also form the bedrock of a new financial support/training division of DIFD that works with private companies in building strong financial institutions in developing countries.
Cost of rebuilding Syria
The World Bank estimates that the cost of reconstructing Syria is $216bn, however, it may be as high as $335bn. There has been $108bn worth of demage to capital stock such as infaustructure, homes and business buildings. These costs are nearly 10 times the Syrian economy.
It would be nearly impossible to find all this money simply in the Arab World, whilst the Gulf states have financed much of the early devleopment the Gulf Crisis and diversification are straining their budgets while the rest of the region is focused on improving their own economies.
State of Syrian media
Syria's transition to democracy, if it occurs, will require the development of a strong, non-sectarian media ecosystem in which joruanlists are free to invistage and report on events.
Whilst press freedom has increased dramatically accorirding to Reporters Without Borders yet questions remain about press freedom and how well the press will be able to operate. Currently media system faces some critical problems. These include a lack of access to funding, poor infrastructure, uncertainty on government policy and deep poverty that will make maintaining a liberal media ecosystem that does not descend into sectarianism to keep consumers difficult.
The UK's media enviroment is certainly no paragon of virtue and people inside and outside the industry regornise its flaws and debates remain about regulation. However, this does not mean the UK has no means to support Syria's media system through funding, reporting and assistance in building an impartial state media.
In May this year, the Syrian government restarted broadcasting from the Syrian Arab News Agency, but it is important that SANA does not become what it was under Assad, a propaganda tool for the state.
The British government, through BBC News and BBC Arabic can support in providing training to employees of the agency on how to operate impartially and with due dillegnece to the impacts of their reporting. Building SANA into a respected media institution will require other actions and will require the govenrment not to overstretch, but providing the reporters at the agency the skills to do their job the best they can will be a key part, if they are not trained properly SANA could run the risk of failing to be a unifying media agency in a divided country.
Supporting the emergence of an effective and independent private media ecosystem is also key and will require investment in news agencies both domestically and among the diaspora so they can build the infrastructure and media necessary to provide local, national and international reporting for the country.
Providing this support and linking British aid in other sectors like banking to the ability for other to build a free press will enable us to maintian preassure on the governemnt to liberalise and help strenghten those in the country pushing for this whilst also helping rebuilding the country.
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