Syria's New Investment Law and the Return of State-Mediated Market Access
On investment reform, reconstruction, and the risks of renewed elite access.
As Syria moves toward reconstruction, the country’s new authorities have already made a consequential decision about who will control the postwar economy. Last June, President Ahmed al-Sharaa enacted Investment Law 114 by presidential decree, a law Syrian Investment Authority (SIA) Chairman Talal al-Hilali has since promoted to investors in Dubai and London.
The terms of an investment law offer a useful indicator of the political economy that will follow. They determine who can invest, under what conditions, and with what protections, thereby defining who gains access to the most profitable sectors of the economy.
In Syria’s case, the new framework grants sweeping and permanent concessions to investors — incentives so generous they may constrain the state’s future fiscal capacity. Yet rather than make those incentives broadly accessible, the law preserves the country’s longstanding model of state-mediated market access. By retaining a centralized licensing system, it allows the authorities in Damascus to determine which investors can access incentives, land, and strategic sectors, concentrating economic opportunity within a narrow circle of politically connected actors. Addressing these risks will require dismantling that centralized licensing system, which has historically tied investment access to political proximity.
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