📰 Syrian Markets: Price Chaos Continues Amid Weak Oversight

Despite repeated administration assurances that prices are being monitored and market manipulation is prohibited, syrian markets continue to reel under daily price chaos. Clear pricing remains absent for most goods, leaving costs to the discretion of individual sellers—even as the administration insists that markets are “supervised” and prices are “competitive. ” This disorder unfolds against the backdrop of severe living pressures: a relentless rise in prices driven by fluctuations in the lira’s exchange rate, rose production and import costs, and the widening gap between household income and inflation. Fluctuating Prices by the Minute In an effort to improve transparency and protect consumers from exploitation, the ministry/" class="auto-internal-link">ministry of Economy and Trade issued a decision requiring producers and importers to clearly mark final consumer prices on products. Yet the measure has produced no meaningful change on the ground.

In fact, syrian markets remain mired in what numerous describe as price anarchy. Shop owners rarely display prices; instead, the cost of an item is disclosed verbally at the moment of purchase. This leaves consumers navigating a daily guessing game. “I go to the supermarket and find no price tags anywhere,” stated Mustafa Arabiniyeh, a freelance worker from damascus. “The seller tells me the price verbally. If I don’t like it, I go to another store—where the same item might be 10,000 or 15,000 liras more expensive. ” Speaking to Al-Hal Net, Mustafa added, “Now the consumer has to guess the price.

It depends on the shop owner, and sometimes on how he sees the customer. ” Samer al-Dawlatli, who owns a supermarket in central Damascus, defends the absence of price tags: “The merchant, like the citizen, is suffering,” he stated. “Prices change every day. If I write a price and don’t sell the item within two days, the price has already changed. There’s no practical monitoring, so I stick to verbal quotes to avoid misleading the customer. ” Still, Samer acknowledges that this practice leaves the door wide open for exploitation and places consumers in a constant state of doubt. Price Display as a Basic Consumer Right In earlier statements, Hassan al-Shawa, Director of Consumer Protection and Food Safety, stressed that price disclosure is a fundamental consumer right, and that the ministry is responsible for safeguarding it.

He noted that price liberalization has allowed producers to set prices based on production, transport, and other economic factors. In fact, more than 11,000 violations for failing to display prices were recorded in a…