This text outlines the outcomes of the subcommittees' meeting for the chemical sector at the Chamber of Industry in Damascus and its Countryside, highlighting key pillars aimed at protecting and developing local production:
Key Challenges: Industrialists face severe difficulties represented by high energy costs, increased customs duties on imported raw materials (especially for paints and mineral oils), and fierce competition from imported products and stock items.
Urgent Sector-Specific Demands:
Paints, Oils, and Sanitary Paper: Demanding the adjustment of customs duties on raw materials due to the lack of local alternatives, expediting Ministry of Energy approvals for base oils, and banning the import of bulk diapers and stock goods.
Printing and Leather: Demanding protection for the national printing industry (especially against ready-made imports from Lebanon and Turkey), giving printing houses sufficient notice before textbook tenders, raising customs duties on imported footwear, implementing strict quality control using certificates of origin, and establishing specialized institutes to train the workforce.
Cosmetics: Requiring importers to place clear specification labels on products to combat counterfeit and expired goods.
Administrative and Logistical Facilities:
Proposing the installation of scanner devices at border crossings to speed up export shipping and prevent cargo spoilage, while resolving the issues of subscribers in Adra Industrial City and Sahnaya Industrial Zone.
Revealing plans to establish a "twinning" program between Syrian and Saudi standards and updating specification labels.
Demanding the automation of Social Insurance payments electronically and halting supply inspection penalties that rely on outdated standards.
The Strategic Solution: Emphasizing the utmost importance of organizing a major national industrial conference under the patronage and presence of His Excellency the President of the Republic to establish radical solutions that position industry as the primary pillar of the national economy
15/7/2026
