The Syrian regime government’s Council of Ministers has approved the recommendation of the Economic Committee to raise agricultural diesel prices by 150%.
On Wednesday, October 30, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers published details of the session on its Facebook page, which discussed raising the price of agricultural diesel.
The reason given was that industrial actors were trading in diesel, along with instances of price distortion, which undermined the expected impact of price support for products.
During the session held last Tuesday, the Council of Ministers discussed the Economic Committee’s recommendation to increase the price of diesel distributed to the agricultural sector at the supported price from 2,000 Syrian pounds per liter to 5,000 pounds.
Additionally, the Council raised the price of diesel distributed to agricultural industrial facilities from 8,000 pounds to the cost price.
The dollar exchange rate is 14,650 Syrian pounds, according to the S-P Today website, which specializes in currency prices.
Due to the existence of multiple prices, parallel markets for diesel emerged and became economically viable, according to the Council of Ministers, leading some actors to trade in diesel rather than use it for its intended purpose.
Recently, one industrial entity that traded in diesel was stopped, with quantities reaching millions of liters, and its financial violations valued in the tens or even hundreds of billions of Syrian pounds.
The session focused on the necessity to narrow the price variation margins to reduce the opportunities for the existence of parallel markets for trading in diesel.
For his part, the Minister of Oil in the Syrian regime government, Firas Qaddour, stated that 80% of the diesel distributed in Syria is still at the supported price, during an intervention on the Alikhbaria channel.
He added that the financial deficit in the heating fuel sector reached 10 trillion Syrian pounds alone.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection raised the selling price of diesel specified for vehicles to 11,880 Syrian pounds, reflecting an increase of nearly 500%.
Since August 2023, the regime government set the price of supported diesel at 2,000 pounds but has continued to distribute fuel allocations to residents in controlled areas in a regulated manner through specified allocations for each family carrying a “smart card.”
Also, a few days ago, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection adjusted the prices of various types of non-supported fuels, and according to the new price list, the price of supported gasoline increased to 10,966 Syrian pounds, after being sold at 10,735 pounds in September.
For more than a year, there have been multiple decisions to raise fuel prices by the Ministry of Trade, which benefits Golden Gate Company, jointly authorized with Mahrukat Company to sell oil derivatives for industrial facilities.