Enab Baladi – Jana al-Issa

Cotton production in Syria continues to decrease year after year, with no solutions in sight to stop the bleeding of one of the most prominent strategic crops in the country over the decades.

The decline in production has a significant impact on the textile and industrial sectors, while also increasing the import burden on traders in both the public and private sectors, as they resort to importing what remains of their needs for cotton, incurring additional costs.

In regime-controlled areas, there were plans for the current season to plant 14,000 hectares in secure areas, of which 8,722 hectares were planted, an increase of 1,500 hectares over last year. However, the implementation rate of the plan is only 62%, according to the statements of Ahmad al-Ali, the director of the Cotton Office in the Ministry of Agriculture, at the end of last September.

Al-Ali attributed the main reason for the non-compliance with the plan to farmers shifting to crops like yellow corn, seeded watermelon, and sesame instead of cotton due to the long planting cycle, high agricultural input costs, as well as labor costs and difficulties in its availability, which exposes them to losses.

The Ministry of Agriculture estimates the expected cotton yield for the current season at about 25,500 tons, an increase of approximately 10,000 tons compared to the previous season, but these figures are still far from the production level before 2011.

Regime is unable to produce

Cotton is considered a strategic crop in Syria after wheat. Previously, before 2011, Syria ranked second in the world in cotton production after India, with an annual production exceeding one million tons, accounting for 8.3% of the global cotton production, and local consumption reaching 30% of the production volume, with the remainder being exported.

This sector provided job opportunities for farmers and workers in ginning and textile mills. The cotton industry employs 20% of the industrial workforce in Syria, according to political economy researcher Yahya al-Sayed Omar.

In a conversation with Enab Baladi, al-Sayed Omar noted that this sector has currently witnessed severe decline, with a production decrease of 88%, leading to local production no longer covering needs. The regime’s government was forced to import cotton in 2021, marking the first time Syria has done so. Had it not been for this import, textile factories in Syria would have ceased operations, potentially resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs for workers.

In light of this reality and the significant importance of cotton, it appears that official authorities in various areas of control are not sufficiently concerned about this strategic crop.

The lack of desire from the de facto governments in northeastern and northwestern Syria to accept the crop from farmers is attributed by researchers to their lack of sufficient textile factories to absorb production, as most textile mills in Aleppo city are under regime control and most of them are out of service.

On the regime government level, several centers for receiving cotton have been established, but the prices offered are not encouraging for farmers. Additionally, the crisis faced by farmers lies in transporting it to the receiving centers, as their number is limited, requiring farmers to transport their crops over relatively long distances, incurring high costs especially due to the scarcity of fuel and its rising price in the parallel (black) market.

As a result of these conditions, farmers’ profits are declining, making the price incompatible with costs. Furthermore, the regime government is slow to pay farmers for their crops due to its liquidity shortages, and delays in payments negatively impact farmers, in addition to the depreciation of the Syrian pound, which means a decrease in the effective value of cotton prices.

Al-Sayed Omar believes that the regime government is not inclined to support cotton farming for several reasons, including that some major traders prefer to import it as it provides them with substantial profits, as well as the fact that the yields from other crops, such as tobacco, are higher for the regime, being relatively high-yield.

The researcher noted that the decisions issued by the regime’s government are made with a trader’s mentality rather than a state’s logic, which will negatively affect the future of strategic crops and consequently the future of the state’s economy, according to al-Sayed Omar.

Textile sector is suffering

Syria needs approximately 250,000 tons of raw cotton, producing about 88,000 tons of ginned cotton, meeting its market needs for ginned cotton, yarns, and woven fabrics.

The decline in cotton production constantly tops the list of major problems faced by the textiles sector, alongside several other issues that have led some industrialists to close their facilities due to sustained losses.

With the decline in production due to years of war and the deterioration of infrastructure and difficulties accessing water, industrial facilities have faced significant challenges.

In general, the impact of reduced cotton production is negative on the industry’s growth and sustainability, posing a primary challenge to rebuilding the textile sector in Syria. Its decline has caused cost increases, as some factories rely on imports to meet their needs, further inflating production costs.

Due to these circumstances, many factories have been unable to survive due to the lack of raw materials, leading to job losses and decreased competitiveness. Some facilities have sought alternative raw materials or developed new technologies, but doing so requires significant investment.

The state-owned Tishreen newspaper noted that the textile sector contributed 27% to the non-petroleum industrial output and about 45% of non-oil exports, employing approximately 30% of the total workforce in industry, and nearly 20% of Syrian citizens. There are about 24,000 officially registered facilities of various sizes operating in the textile industries, excluding illegal ones.

To restore these figures in the textile sector, industrialist Atef Tayfour, residing in regime-controlled areas, stated that solutions are available within the resources and capabilities, as he expressed. These solutions include raising the marketing price for farmers within the limits of global prices, in addition to incentives to combat the black market and smuggling of the crop, ensuring the delivery of the entire product, and expanding the area of cotton cultivation.

Tayfour called for immediate restructuring of the technical committees responsible for crop yield per hectare, aiming to restore yield to 4.5 tons per hectare, which has declined to 2.5 tons, ensuring production is doubled within the distributed budgets, avoiding waste of public funds and resources, along with expanding agriculture in modern irrigated areas and expanding along the coast within areas suitable for water desalination, and adopting cotton as a primary material for the Syrian economy as it was before 2011.

The assistant researcher at the Jusoor for Studies Center specializing in economic affairs, Abdul Azim al-Mugharbel, stated to Enab Baladi that the decline in cotton production has had clear negative repercussions on the textile industries, which are considered one of the key industries in Syria, resulting in their decline and many industrialists opting out due to rising prices resulting from decreased production volume.

Because the import of ginned cotton is prohibited, industrialists have no choice but to use alternative materials such as synthetic fibers and polyester, which inherently results in a decrease in the quality of textiles.

It seems that the regime government finds the tobacco sector offers higher returns than the cotton sector with lower costs and quicker returns for investment, according to al-Mugharbel, noting that this trend undoubtedly burdens the import bill, as industrialists will be forced to import materials to continue production, potentially engaging in illegal imports, which increases production costs, adds burdens on them, and leads to inflation in the prices of local textile products and diminishes their competitiveness.

Facilities out of service

During a discussion on a paper at a workshop titled “The Syrian Textile Industries – Reality and Requirements for Recovery and Revival,” published in 2022, former Minister of Industry Ziad Sabbagh stated that the textile sector suffers from many problems, including structural, financial, and technical challenges that limit the conversion of this sector’s advantages into competitive advantages, particularly regarding inefficiencies in supply and export systems, and not keeping pace with global developments, in addition to a large number of facilities going out of production and raw material shortages, especially cotton.

Since 2011, 342 textile facilities have ceased operation, with a production capacity equivalent to over 158,000 tons, while the number of suspended clothing production facilities has reached 6,193, with a production capacity exceeding 46,000 tons of clothing, and these numbers do not include unregistered facilities.

According to the paper, the major weaknesses faced by the textile sector are characterized by a lack of coherence and integration between the capacities of cotton production, yarn production, textile production, and higher value-added clothing, alongside the absence of effective support institutions and intermediary institutions.

Additionally, the sector faces the absence of a lending system capable of providing necessary funding, rising production costs of raw materials and fuel, increasing electricity costs, and the continual rise in exchange rates amid bureaucratic customs procedures, which take a long time, along with a severe bureaucratic slowdown and delay in decision-making within state-owned companies, as well as low productivity and decreased utilization of available capacities, along with a scattering of facilities and workshops.