<\/a>Despite a modest economic growth in 2010 (3.4%), Syria began recording a negative economic growth (-2.3%) with the beginning of the civil war, in 2011. More precisely, Syria\u2019s economy is shaken by the conflict between civilians and Bashar al-Assad\u2019s army. The GDP was of $107.6 billion in 2012, lower than the one in 2011, of $110.1 billion, and from the one in 2010, $113.9 billion. On the other hand, the Syrian economy contracted in 2012 also because of international sanctions. The effects of the declining economy in Syria are raising budget and trade deficits, dwindling foreign exchange reserves, and the devaluation of the Syrian pound. The upside is that Damascus has liberalized the economic policies, which means opening private banks, cutting lending interest rates, raising prices on some subsidized items, consolidating multiple exchange rates, and establishing the Damascus Stock Exchange. Another bad part is that the government is the one which is ruling the economy. With a GDP per capita of $5,100, 11.9% of the Syrians live under World Bank\u2019s poverty line. As for long-term challenges, Syria must manage to break through foreign trade barriers, improve oil production, decrease the unemployment rate, and raise its budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syria, officially known as the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country situated in Western Asia, in Middle East. It borders the Mediterranean Sea, between Lebanon and Turkey. Slightly larger than North Dakota, Syria has a total land mass of 71,479 square miles, which makes it the 89th largest country in the world. With a population […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2765,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/2765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.populationfun.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}