The US is pushing to integrate Syria “responsibly” into the international financial system after lifting sanctions on the country, a senior State Department official told the first major American-Syrian business gathering in Damascus since the fall of the Assad regime.
The departments of State and Treasury are helping Syrian authorities find “banking solutions, regulatory clarity and fast-track approvals” for investments, Jacob McGee, deputy assistant secretary for the Levant, said in televised remarks to the gathering of Syrian and American business owners and executives on Monday.
He said the US has also produced the most comprehensive guides to investment in Syria.
“We have done our part“ by lifting the sanctions, Mr McGee said. However, “there is continued direct engagement” with Syrian authorities to lift the economy.
Syria needs at least $216 billion for reconstruction after nearly 14 years of civil war, according to the World Bank. The Syrian pound remains at 13,000 to the dollar, down from 50 pounds just before the March 2011 revolt against Assad family rule. By the end of the year, the country was in civil war.
US President Donald Trump informed Congress this month that he had decided to rescind Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, which restricts US foreign assistance, bans defence exports and sales, and imposes financial conditions and controls over exports of dual-use items.
Credit guarantee agencies and correspondent banks have been reluctant to deal with post-Assad Syria, in part because of the US designation, according to a Syrian business executive.
However, Syria remains on the Financial Action Task Force's "grey list" of countries that need to shore up their safeguards against money laundering and terrorism financing.
Radical Islamist rebels led by Ahmad Al Shara, who is now the President, ousted the Assad regime in December 2024. Mr Al Shara has developed friendly relations with Washington, which admitted Syria to the US-led anti-ISIS coalition last year. It also began lifting sanctions imposed on the country during the 64-year rule of the Assad family, which were increased in response to the former regime’s violent crackdown on the 2011 uprising.
The US is supporting an ”investment-led stabilisation”, with 18,000 new companies registered in Syria last year, Mr McGee said. He expects more Syrian refugees to return home on top of 1.5 million who have already done so since the fall of the former regime.
American companies have been exploring “opportunities, brand registration”, and signing initial deals “across multiple sectors”, Mr McGee said.
Licences from Washington for exports to Syria now take six weeks, compared with nine months during the last years of the Assad regime, according to Mr McGee. He said there had been "no rejections” since the bulk of sanctions were lifted last year.
”Deals are moving. Even tourists are starting to return,“ he said, pointing to improved hotel occupancy rates.
Few US-Syria deals have been made public so far. The last one was on June 16, when state media reported that the authorities awarded a US energy company, ConocoPhillips, and a company linked to Syrian-British billionaire Ayman Al Asfari, a deal to develop gasfields in the country, without specifying where or the terms of the concessions.
Among those who addressed the forum on Monday were Safwat Raslan, Syria’s new central bank governor, Finance Minister Yisr Barnieh, and Saad Baroud, director of American affairs at the Syrian Foreign Ministry, which has influence over the country's business policy.
Issam Ghreiwati, president of the US-Syria Business Council, which organised the forum, said representatives of 10 American companies and 80 people who flew in from the US participated in the event.
Among the few American speakers was Charles Leary, a senior executive at the Texas company Hunt Oil, and Jay Salkini, a Syrian-American telecom entrepreneur who is vice president of the council. Mr Salkini operated in areas of northern Syria that were outside the control of the former regime during the civil war.
