The Adra Industrial City Board of Directors has approved the city’s draft budget for the current year, pointing out that work is underway to equip a judicial complex and a public and private hospital inside the city.

The Adra Industrial City draft budget for 2021 amounted to 19 billion Syrian pounds (SYP = 5,671,641 USD), the Building Syria website reported on 27 January.  

On 26 January, Rif Dimashq governor Moataz Abu al-Nasr Jamran chaired a meeting, during which the city’s budget was approved and the number of facilities still in production and those under-equipped was discussed, member of the city’s board of directors and Damascus and Rif Dimashq Chamber of Industry’s Board of Directors Hussam Abdeen stated to the website.     

Abdeen mentioned that a judicial complex would be opened inside the city in the coming days to facilitate judicial and legal proceedings for both workers and residents.

He also said that an amount of 400 million SYP (119,581 USD) from the 2021 budget is allocated for establishing a hospital affiliated to the city’s administration, adding that the city’s board of directors will support a project for building a private hospital by one of the investors.

The number of workers in Adra Industrial City is 70,000, Abdeen said. The city had secured 660 job opportunities in 2020, the Syrian Ministry of Local Administration and Environment said in an official report released on 24 December 2020. 

According to the report, the city’s net investment income in 2020 amounted to 5.3 billion SYP (1,584,454 USD), while the expenditures on infrastructure and legal expropriation reached 6.5 billion SYP (1,943,198 USD).

The industrial city of Adra is located in Rif Dimashq governorate to the northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, 35 kilometers away from it. The city is divided into two zones, a residential, commercial, and administrative zone, which extends on an area of 3000 hectares (30,000,000 m2) and a second zone for industrial clusters with the same area.

It has 6000 sites for industrial establishments of various industries; engineering, textile, chemical, food, construction materials, tanning, metal pouring, and crafts at an estimated cost of 30 billion SYP (8,968,609 USD), according to the Syrian Investment Agency (SIA).

After regaining control over areas in Damascus’s surroundings in 2017, the Syrian regime’s government attempted to relaunch the economy through supporting industrial facilities to fund the state treasury, following the heavy losses of the Syrian economy.

The government focused its interest on major industrial cities established in 2004, most notably the industrial city of Sheikh Najjar in Aleppo and the industrial city of Adra in Rif Dimashq governorate.

Adra Industrial City is a major industrial center, as it is the largest industrial city in Syria. Since the city’s establishment, the government has sought to expand, operate, and attract investors to it. The regime’s government opened the door for investment in the city and helped capital owners to start new investments without administrative complexities or onerous conditions. It also sold land areas to industrial facilities and companies’ owners.

In 2004, a legislative decree was issued to promote the Syrian industry and activate, develop, and implement investment projects in industrial cities. The decree stipulated the formation of a board of directors for each industrial city with broad powers.

The decree was criticized for it explicitly aimed to empty major Syrian cities of industrial establishments and limit industrialists’ existence in these areas. However, the decree was put into force, costing many people their work advantages and creating jobs for others.