Abu Aziz erases the previous pricing of various goods on the shelves of his store in the city of Maarat Misrin, replacing them with new prices with increases ranging between 10% and 20%.
Most merchants in the northern Idlib governorate raised prices, as did Abu Ziad, a week after the caretaker government issued a unified customs fees bulletin that will be applied at all border crossings in the country.
The expanded regulation changed the price equation in the Syrian governorates that were subject to multiple administrations two months ago. The prices of goods increased in northern Syria, while they decreased in the areas of the ousted regime. Customs tariffs in those areas decreased by about 60%, while they increased several times over at the Bab al-Hawa and al-Salama crossings.
Abu Aziz told "Economy" that the decision was shocking and sudden, noting that "merchants refrained from buying and selling during the past few days, but they resumed work after promises from the government to amend the regulation."
*Inflation wave
"Eqtsad news site monitored the state of chaos that affected prices in the markets of northern Syria, especially during the days following the implementation of the new customs regulations, where it was noted that the percentage of increase in food prices was close to 20%, while the percentage of increase in electrical appliances exceeded 35%.
With the exception of the rest of the meat, the fees were negatively reflected on the prices of chicken, which recorded a 100% increase, due to the increase in fees imposed on feed, while traders of electrical appliances and used European furniture said that this trade is threatened with stopping as a result of the illogical fees imposed on it.
A general state of discontent can be observed in the north of the country regarding the new fees, and residents and traders from the region told "Economy" that the market is still in a state of chaos as goods are priced in an uncontrolled manner, noting that the new prices are not at all in line with income, as the average daily wage of a worker does not exceed 100 Turkish liras (equivalent to 2.80 dollars).
*A Catastrophic Decision
Researcher and Director of the Iqtisadi Platform, Younis Al-Karim, believes that the unified customs bulletin was a "catastrophic mistake", noting during an interview with "Economy" that issuing the fees "was not professional due to many mistakes such as equating the merchant with the industrialist, which made the commercial sector more profitable than the industrial sector, and thus this raises the cost and excludes industrialists from competition".
Among the observations that Al-Karim monitors is that the unified bulletin did not take into account the strategic importance of countries, as setting any customs fees is proportional to the importance of the country commercially and economically, and the bulletin equated all neighboring countries despite their different positions on the Syrian file.
He adds that pricing the fees in dollars "will negatively affect the reality of the Syrian pound" which is the main currency for trading, which means that "the importer must sell the goods in Syrian pounds and then buy foreign currency from the market to pay the fees, in addition to the price of the imported goods".
It can be noted that the fees were imposed without burdening the commodity, meaning that they equated basic commodities such as wheat and fuel with non-essential commodities such as cars and others, which means that they are temporary, according to Al-Karim, and therefore subsequent governments will work to change them because continuing to work with these fees will increase the burden on the Syrian economy.
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