The Central Bank of Syria requires feeding the accounts of 4 government agencies in cash and exclusively

The Central Bank of Syria asked banks operating in Syria not to carry out any bank transfers from the accounts of the private sector to the account of 4 government institutions, and stipulated that the accounts of the four institutions be fed exclusively through cash deposits.

The central circular included the General Corporation for Tobacco, the General Corporation for Internal Trade of Metals and Building Materials – Amran, the General Company for Iron and Steel Products, and the General Corporation for Feed.

According to market experts, the aim of the circular is to withdraw cash from the market, and it comes in conjunction with another circular issued by the Central Bank, in which it asked banks not to ratification any check issued in favor of customs in case the account was previously filled with an amount of money.

A few days ago, the Central Bank circulated to the banks not to ratify any check issued for the benefit of the General Customs Directorate, unless the account (from which the check was drawn) was fed in cash with an amount not less than the value of the check issued, and for a maximum period of 72 hours prior to the request for ratification.

According to the previous circular, the Central Bank made the values ​​of commercial transactions with customs exclusively cash or through a check that did not exceed 72 hours, with the aim of controlling liquidity in the market and limiting speculation in the national currency, according to an unnamed banking source.

There are 6 government banks in Syria, working alongside 14 private banks, and their total deposits amounted to about 7.4 trillion SYP at the end of 2020, while the value of credit facilities reached about 4.65 trillion SYP until the end of 2020.

At the end of 2020, the volume of excess liquidity in banks (the loanable amount) amounted to 2.962 trillion pounds, distributed between 1.518 trillion pounds in public banks, 708 billion pounds in traditional private banks, and 736 billion pounds in Islamic private banks.