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Central bank governor denies Syrian pound deterioration

26 April 2013 02:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The governor of the Central Bank of Syria, Adib Mayaleh, ruled out any crumbling in the Syrian pound under the brunt of a two-year-long crisis and denied reports that the country expects any foreign financial aid, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The pro-government al-Watan newspaper on Thursday quoted Mayaleh as saying that the depreciation of the Syrian pound value is not a collapse.

"It is true that the U.S. dollar before the crisis was trading at 50 (Syrian) pounds and now is up to 115 pounds ... If we wanted, we would have brought the pound back to the best level but the performance of the national economy makes it incumbent on us to keep the value of the currency at this level," he said, adding that the currency is protected and covered, and is printed abroad.

He also denied that Syria is on the verge of an agreement with Russia and Iran to get financial support to offset part of economic losses caused in the past two years, which reportedly exceeded 25 billion euros.

Mayaleh stressed that the Central Bank's reserves of hard currency are large and enough to meet the needs of the country and defend a stable exchange rate.

He said the Syrian foreign exchange reserves amounted to more than 4 billion dollars, contending that the ratio of the Syrian reserves to population is now higher than other countries, such as Egypt.

Meanwhile, Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said in a recent interview with the pro-government al-Ekhbariya TV that the pound would return to the real exchange rates against hard currencies at the end of the crisis.

However, this placatory tone doesn't have a positive sound on ground among most Syrians, who complain of soaring prices and deteriorating living conditions amid reports suggesting that inflation has reached more than 50 percent and thousands of Syrians are jobless.

A recent report published by al-Eqtissadi, or the Economist local website, said that the economic changes experienced by the country over the past two years have had their repercussions on the Syrian family's consumer habits, as the soaring prices of different food commodities have forced the Syrian families to change their eating habits, rearrange priorities and rationalize consumption.