Role of Banks in Stimulating Investment Process

(ST)- The Syrian Investment Agency in cooperation with public and private banks recently held a symposium on reality and prospects of investment, its current challenges and the role of banks in stimulating investment process.

During the symposium, Director General of the General Authority for Investment, eng. Hala Ghazal, affirmed the need to consolidate efforts and pay more attention to the investment, help the owners of small and medium enterprises, promote activities aimed for export in order to advance the Syrian economy and support the integrated development process

She pointed out that the volume of foreign investment flows to Syria that amounted to 1.5 billion dollars a year on average between the year 2007 to 2010 and the presence of a banking system that can be relied upon is still a vital request because of the importance of the role it plays and represents of an  important mechanical  process to collect and convert savings into investments, in addition to attracting foreign investments and directing them to finance projects more efficient, productive and profitable in order to serve the development process and supporting the national economy.

Sufficient capacity

In an exclusive statement to local press, Deputy Director-General of the Commercial Bank of Syria, Maysa Kdimi, said that the bank is ready to play any role entrusted to it in the current and future period and the bank has readiness on the level of human and administrative resources that are capable of dealing with various current variables and types of funding that could be granted.

“The bank has the financial capability, the abundance of necessary liquidity and a local linking network links between the various branches of the bank that will accelerate the delivery of services, pointing out that the commercial bank is able to move beyond the closure of some branches because of the circumstances the country is facing by working on re-opening those branches in safe places and able to provide services.

We need funding

For his part, Director of Banking Operations at the Industrial Bank, Shehadeh Othman,  said that the  government must work hard  to supply the bank with large sources of financing to enable the bank to fulfill the role assigned to it by means of aid and long-term loans from friendly countries and on favorable terms, so that leads to an increase in funding sources and reducing the cost and thus the reflection of the decline to reduce the rate of interest on loans for industrialists, and benefit from the cumulative experience of workers at the Industrial Bank.

Reconstruction
For his part, economic expert Shadi Ahmad said that to reach a vision about the role of banks in the reconstruction in Syria, we need to develop the entire legal, regulatory, financial, operating and financing environment.

With regard to the legal and legislative environment, he explained that it is necessary to develop the Banking Law so that it becomes a developmental role and the completion of an integrated feasibility study to the issue of reconstruction in partnership between the banks, developing the necessary system of contracts with the strategic partner by increasing the proportion of the local component, and passing a law to establish the Bank of Reconstruction, and the quotas are distributed among the existing banks.

At the level of the regulatory environment, Ahmed sees that it is necessary to put the organizational structure of the full modern investment systems to expand the powers of banks’ business, and the development of operations system and the powers of management and branches so dependent on the regional planning, and human resources plan.

In the financing and financial environment, he also stresses the need to develop a participatory system of financing the project, which includes the relationship of strategic partnership with local investor and the search for local sources of funding (public or private) to enable the national capital.

At the level of the operating environment, Mr. Ahmad explained that it is necessary to draw a map for the distribution of the studies (geographically) and perform political, social and economic studies based on cooperation with the government agencies.

For his part, representatives of private banks called to establish workshops to improve the legal, legislative and regulatory environment of the reality of the banks, stressing readiness to participate in the reconstruction process.

Executive General Manager of Bemo Bank, Hassan Traboulsi, pointed out the need to establish an appropriate investment climate and to reconsider the banking laws to enable private and public banks in cooperation with the contribution of the reconstruction process in Syria and actually improve the investment reality.

Sharif el -Khatib