A Syrian-Lebanese meeting held to solve problems facing agricultural exchange and flow of goods

Damascus (ST): The Syrian-Lebanese agricultural meeting, which was held in Damascus yesterday, focused on the problems and difficulties facing the exchange of fresh and processed agricultural products, agricultural production requirements and transit, with the aim of finding solutions to them.

The Minister of Agriculture, Eng. Muhammad Hassan Qatana, stated that the aim of the meeting is dialogue and consultation to raise the problems that hinder the commercial exchange and marketing of agricultural products, and to propose appropriate solutions, so that the executive authorities in the two countries take necessary measures to provide facilities according to the current reality, in a way that supports producers in the two countries in terms of marketing their products and that helps exporters reduce freight and transportation costs.

Minister Qatana explained that this meeting comes as a continuation of the work of the quartet meeting of the ministers of agriculture of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, which concluded last Monday, pointing to the need to come up with a working paper that serves as a road map for the next stage that contributes to increasing the exchange of products and reducing their costs in the interest of the two countries, and preserves the privacy of products in each country.

For his part, the Lebanese Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Abbas Hajj Hassan, stated that this meeting opens the horizon for dialogue and allows the way to solve outstanding problems, stressing the need to come up with proposals that serve the two countries.

In his turn, Nasri Al-Khoury, Secretary-General of the Lebanese-Syrian Supreme Council, underlined the businessmen in both countries should constantly meet to remove all obstacles to the commercial exchange of agricultural and industrial products between the two countries, to achieve economic integration, and to implement what was previously agreed upon.

The head of the Federation of Syrian Agricultural Chambers, Muhammad Kishtu, said: This meeting with a delegation of Lebanese businessmen comes as one of the immediate outputs of the quadripartite meeting and the memorandum of understanding that was signed, pointing to the need to come up with more flexible results that are applied immediately and benefit both countries.

K.Q.