A Qatari company has embarked on a $3.3 billion farming and food-processing project in Syria that is expected to employ thousands, as Gulf investors step up efforts to support the country’s economic rehabilitation.
The project by Baladna Food Industries, covering 2,400 square kilometres, will produce everything from cotton and wheat to finished products such as textiles and cheese, said Kamel Al Abdullah, chief executive of the newly formed subsidiary Baladna Syria.
Baladna Food Industries is chaired by Syrian-Qatari tycoon Moutaz Al Khayyat. Mr Al Khayyat’s brother, Ramez, is the company’s president. The Al Khayyat brothers have emerged as key figures in Syria's postwar reconstruction, with projects in the country’s energy, power, property and transport sectors.
Baladna’s project is part of a broader push by Gulf companies to help finance and rebuild Syria’s economy after more than a decade of war. Qatari and Emirati businesses have moved into agriculture and other strategic sectors, while Gulf capital and expertise are increasingly being directed towards rebuilding infrastructure and expanding production capacity as Syria seeks to reconnect with regional markets.
The project will be mostly on land in the Euphrates River Basin leased from the Syrian government, Mr Al Abdullah said this week. The area, in the eastern Raqqa and Deir Ezzor governorates, makes up 1.3 per cent of Syria’s land mass.
Baladna has also acquired land in central Syria for a dairy factory. The company is also considering acquisitions in coastal areas of Syria, which have high rainfall and some of the country's richest soil, said Mr Al Abdullah. The company will contract local farmers across the country to produce staples and other food for Baladna, and provide them with material and know-how to raise their yield, on top of its direct acquisitions.
In a keynote speech at Agritek Syria, an expo in Damascus sponsored by Baladna, Mr Al Abdullah said he expected agriculture to drive “economic recovery and social stability”, with the government eager to revive the agriculture sector and develop outlying areas.
Since Ahmad Al Shara ousted the Assad family regime in December 2024 and became president, Syria has received Turkish and Gulf backing, enabling close ties with Washington. The US admitted Syria to the anti-ISIS coalition and lifted most sanctions on the country at the end of last year. This has opened up opportunities for investment, especially by Syrian expatriates and members of the diaspora, across the economy.
A main theme at Agritek was Syria’s potential as a regional farming powerhouse, despite the rising costs of raw materials, lack of electricity, its weak banking system and the demise of its state-controlled agriculture cooperatives.
Flanked by the Syrian and Lebanese agricultural ministers, Mr Al Abdullah said that the project would require continued stabilisation and consistent development policies to rebuild Syria’s infrastructure and education system. Agriculture constituted 43 per cent of Syria’s GDP in 2024, according to the latest World Bank data, compared with 21 per cent in 2011. However, the economy had massively shrunk in the same civil war period.
Baladna's shares were trading at a steady 1.23 Qatari riyals on Thursday.
In May this year, Baladna and the UAE’s Al Dahra signed a deal to jointly develop and share farming techniques and assets in Syria and other countries.
The agreement aims to combine Baladna’s “growing international dairy platform, and Al Dahra’s expertise in large-scale farming and feed supply”, according to a memorandum of understanding between the two companies.
Al Dahra is half-owned by the UAE sovereign fund and has farms and other operations around the globe, while Baladna dominates the dairy market in Qatar. Last year, it signed an agreement with the Algerian government for a large dairy project in southern Algeria.
Syria has the soil, diverse climate, enough water in the Euphrates and an accumulation of farming knowledge, as well as regional markets, said Mr Al Abdullah. He is a regional food security expert with a postdoctorate degree in strategic management from the US. Over the past two decades, he has founded and managed agri businesses and food industries in the Gulf, Egypt and other countries.
However, Syria needs to develop a “whole system that links agricultural production with industry and scientific research to innovation”. He expects the project, which will conform to international standards and more “precise” agriculture, aided by artificial intelligence, to raise productivity across the country because of its sheer size and the many jobs he forecasts that it will provide.
The bulk of the project, which will produce cotton, sugar, and wheat, will be in the east, although Baladna plans to produce fruit and vegetables in the coastal regions. Mr Al Abdullah said additional funding would partly come from international banks.
Syria's eastern provinces were neglected during the five-decade Assad family rule. During the civil war, armed groups and local tribes filled the power vacuum. Budget allocations to the area were meagre, although it produces most of the country's agricultural commodities and accounts for most of its energy output, through its oil and gasfields and hydroelectric dams on the Euphrates. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who took over the area from ISIS, controlled large parts of the east during the civil war. Earlier this year, the government regained control over most of the region.
In the last decade before Syria’s civil war, the east suffered from a lack of rain and from hundreds of thousands of illegal wells that destroyed its water reservoirs. Syria became a wheat importer, and dwindling water supplies forced one million people to flee the east to the outskirts of big cities to the west, contributing to the malaise that fuelled the 2011 revolt.
Mr Al Abdullah said water for the project would not be an issue, because it would be mainly sourced from the Euphrates, as well as what he described as enough groundwater, with farms using advanced irrigation techniques. Syria has not been using its share of the river water under agreements in the 1980s with Turkey and Iraq, because of the civil war and prior state mismanagement of agriculture.
“Having the resources alone is not enough to ensure food security and self-sufficiency,” Mr Al Abdullah said.
