The governor of the Syrian Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Al-Hasriya, announced on Monday that his country was going to change his currency by eliminating two zeros in his tickets and printing new cuts to replace those issued under the Bashar Al-Assad regime. Since the beginning of the Civil War in Syria in 2011, the Syrian Libra has collapsed, from 50 pounds for a dollar to more than 10,000 pounds per dollar, which forces Syrias to transport huge ticket packages to make their purchases.
He added that old tickets would simply replace the new ones, thus avoiding a new inflation in a country hit by the outbreak of prices from war and the years of economic sanctions. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team went to the country in June to “take stock of economic and financial conditions.” “We will not increase the money supply, but we will replace the existing money supply,” he said.
“Financial Liberation”
“The change of national currency is a sign of financial release after the political release and the fall of the old regime,” added Abdul Qadir al-Hasriya. The recovery of the value of the Syrian book is one of the greatest challenges for the new Syrian authorities after the fall of Bashar el Assad, whose image and that of his father Hafez, which reigned before him, appear in certain tickets.
The Central Bank plans to print six new cuts, said the governor. Tickets would be printed in several places for logistics reasons and to be able to meet the demand, he added, without specifying who would print them or where. After the beginning of the Civil War, Syrian tickets were printed exclusively in Russia, a nearby Allied of the Assad government. Since December, Damascus has received at least one load of tickets printed in Russia.
Source: BFM TV
