The general budget in Syria reflects the level of government performance and serves as a key indicator of the country’s economic and social priorities. With successive crises, however, the budget has increasingly revealed a wide gap between official figures and the living reality of Syrian families. Added to this are mounting challenges: the erosion of purchasing power due to inflation, weakened public revenues from declining exports and domestic production, the rising burden of subsidies despite gradual cuts, and the urgent need to rebuild destroyed infrastructure, a task that will require hundreds of billions of dollars.
In this context, Finance Minister Mohammad Yasser Barniya told the state-run news agency SANA, during a visit to the Ministry of Finance’s pavilion at the Damascus International Fair and the launch of a new digital budget platform, that the state budget for fiscal year 2026 would mark a “qualitative leap” in managing public finances to better serve Syria’s economic policy. Yet the core question remains: how can a budget restore balance and ensure sustainable development in a country exhausted by years of crisis?
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Official Figures
Data from Syria’s Supreme Council for Economic and Social Planning shows that the 2025 budget stood at around 52.6 trillion Syrian pounds, a 48% increase compared to 2024. Of this, 37 trillion pounds were allocated to current spending and 15.6 trillion to investment spending. The deficit was reportedly reduced to 21%, down from 26% the previous year.
The finance minister stressed that no new taxes were included, with investment spending rising to 30% while current spending was reduced to 70% in a bid to support development and stimulate production.
The 2026 budget, currently under discussion, also places greater emphasis on investment spending, with priority given to health and education, as well as improving wages and salaries for public sector employees. Discussions are underway across ministries and government bodies to produce a “meaningful and effective” draft budget that reduces the deficit.
On paper, the framework aims to redirect spending toward development by boosting investment and lowering the deficit. But experts argue that such steps fall short of improving living standards or productivity. They describe the government’s fiscal policy as focused on “superficial increases” rather than sustainable solutions. Recent budgets, especially those for 2024–2025, project the image of fiscal expansion but, in reality, amount to an “inflationary illusion” with limited power to stimulate growth or enhance public services.
For comparison: Syria’s 2000 budget stood at 308 billion pounds (about $24.6 million at the time), with roughly 70% dedicated to current spending. By 2010, it had risen to 754 billion pounds. In 2024, however, the government passed a budget of 35.5 trillion pounds, equivalent to just $5 billion at the parallel market exchange rate, a figure that reflects the collapse of the pound’s purchasing power more than any real economic expansion.
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Experts on the 2023–2024 Budgets
Historically, Syria’s budgets have mirrored its political, economic, and social realities. From subsidized bread and fuel in the 1970s to military and relief spending in the last decade, the budget has consistently revealed the state’s shifting priorities and challenges.
Yet the 2024 budget highlighted a stark contradiction: a 115% increase over 2023, while citizens’ living conditions continued to deteriorate.
Dr. Shafiq Arbash of Damascus University told +963 that this increase was “illusory and distorted,” reflecting nothing more than price inflation, not real gains in purchasing or investment power. He noted that the figures signal declining services and living standards rather than improvements.
Similarly, Dr. Hassan Hazzouri of Aleppo University told +963 that the 115% rise in 2024 was “not real,” pointing out that when measured in dollars, the budget had in fact shrunk by around 45% compared to 2023, based on the official exchange rate.
Experts argue that the rising deficit relative to actual economic growth reflects a fiscal policy built on expanding expenditures without generating real productivity.
Between Historical Numbers and Present Challenges
Former senior Ministry of Finance official Jomaa Al-Othman told +963 that the Syrian state budget, since independence in 1946, has been more than numbers: it has been the primary tool for distributing resources and the mirror of government priorities. Budgets have always expressed not just fiscal policy, but the broader economic and political vision of the state.
The first budget was drafted in 1947, modest in scale and dependent mainly on taxes and customs revenues. In the 1950s, during the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union (1958–1961), it took on a centralized character with heavier investments in infrastructure and nationalization. In the 1970s and 1980s, defence spending and heavy industry projects like the Euphrates Dam dominated. In the 1990s, the state leaned toward limited economic liberalization, with rising allocations for subsidies on fuel, bread, and sugar. Since 2011, budgets have been consumed by shrinking revenues, ballooning military costs, and increased emergency relief spending.
Al-Othman explained that the budget is typically divided into:
Current spending (operational), covering salaries, subsidies (fuel, basic goods), health, education, and administration.
Investment spending (capital), directed toward infrastructure, national industries, agriculture, and development projects.
Defense and security, which have long taken the largest share, particularly during times of conflict.
Social services, such as healthcare, education, housing, and universities.
