Syria’s new currency purely ‘symbolic,’ economist warns

Shafaq News – Damascus

Syria’s plan to issue new banknotes and remove zeros from the pound is a symbolic move that will not fix the country’s collapsing economy, economist Ibrahim Nafea Qushji said on Monday.

The country's Central Bank announced earlier that it would drop two zeros to simplify transactions and “strengthen the pound.” The currency now trades around 12,000 to the US dollar, compared with nearly 50 before the war, while inflation hit 46.7% last year.

Qushji, a lecturer at Syria’s al-Wataniya (National) Private University, told Shafaq News the measure “changes the form, not the substance,” stressing that only deep structural and fiscal reforms can restore confidence. “The pound has lost more than 99% of its value since 2011, when the civil war began. Redenomination won’t bring it back,” he said.

Citing global precedents, Qushji noted that redenomination “only works with reform.” Turkiye succeeded in 2005 after a sweeping stabilization plan, while Zimbabwe and Venezuela failed when they changed currency design without addressing inflation or governance.

The new notes will reportedly omit portraits of former presidents Hafez and Bashar al-Assad — a symbolic gesture, Qushji added, that does not address the roots of collapse.