DUBAI (Reuters) -Syria’s central bank said a batch of Syrian currency had arrived at Damascus airport from Russia, where banknotes were printed under the rule of toppled President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported on Friday.
The central bank did not specify the amount of currency that had arrived but a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters it was in the “hundreds of billions of Syrian pounds,” equivalent to tens of millions of U.S. dollars.
The source said the cash had been printed in Russia under Assad’s rule but had not been shipped to Syria by the time he was toppled by Islamist rebels in early December 2024.
Syria’s new leadership ordered the Russian company printing the currency to stop after Assad fled to Moscow, the source said, without providing details on what prompted Friday’s delivery of the previously printed cash.
Syria has been facing a liquidity crunch since Assad’s ouster, with Syria’s new central bank governor Maysaa Sabreen telling Reuters in January that she wanted to avoid printing Syrian pounds to guard against a surge in inflation.
Syria’s pound has strengthened on the black market since the new leadership took over, helped by an influx of Syrians from abroad and an end to strict controls on trade in foreign currencies.
It traded at 9,850 pounds to the U.S. dollar on Thursday, according to exchange houses, which are closed on Friday. The official foreign exchange rate has stayed around 13,000 pounds to the U.S. dollar, according to statements by the central bank.
But that has sparked concerns about liquidity in Syrian pounds. The central bank only has foreign exchange reserves of around $200 million in cash, sources told Reuters, a huge drop from the $18.5 billion that the International Monetary Fund estimated Syria had in 2010, a year before civil war erupted.
Russia, which later intervened on Assad’s behalf in the war that broke out after protests against him, is hoping to retain the use of naval and air bases in Syria under its new leaders.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Wednesday, the first call between the two leaders since Assad’s ouster.
The Syrian presidency said Putin had invited Syria’s new foreign minister to visit Moscow and had told Sharaa that Moscow was ready to reconsider bilateral deals signed under Assad.
Before it turned to Russia, Syria had its money printed in Austria by Oesterreichische Banknoten-und Sicherheitsdruck GmbH, a subsidiary of the Austrian central bank.
A report this month by international aid group MercyCorps’ crisis analysis unit said households were struggling to pay for basic needs because of liquidity shortages in the market.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir in Dubai and Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Christina Fincher)
