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Gulf liquidity outpaces Syria’s financial reconnection

16 June 2026

 

Syria has the capital it needs to begin rebuilding. What it lacks is a banking system capable of moving that money at scale, and through 2026, the gap between the availability and mobility of funds has set the ceiling on recovery.

The capital itself is overwhelmingly Gulf and Turkish, deployed along clear lines rather than in a scramble. The $216bn rebuild estimated by the World Bank in its October 2025 damage assessment has room for several principals, and so far they are not competing for the same ground.

Qatar’s UCC Holding anchors two of the largest commitments: a $7bn power generation programme and a $4bn rebuild of Damascus International airport, both under contract since late 2025. The consortiums lean heavily on Turkish contractors, Cengiz and Kalyon among them.

Saudi Arabia’s package, announced in Damascus on 7 February, tilts to infrastructure and services: a SR7.5bn ($2bn) phased rebuild of Aleppo’s airports through the newly launched Elaf Investment Fund, and an STC fibre-optic and datacentre build worth more than SR3bn ($800m).

Regional diplomacy is taking precedence over the commercial carve-up: Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman agreed in Riyadh in early February to coordinate on Syrian reconstruction.

Abu Dhabi’s political embrace came more slowly than Riyadh’s or Doha’s – out of caution over the Islamist-led government– but the UAE’s major ports groups moved decisively.

Dubai’s DP World signed for Tartous in July 2025 and its 30-year concession went operational in mid-November. AD Ports followed on 6 November with a $22m purchase of 20% of the Latakia container terminal – run by France’s CMA CGM – which handles over 95% of Syria’s container volumes.

The wider UAE play has since broadened amid the US-Iran conflict in the Gulf, during which Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa repeatedly voiced solidarity with the UAE.

In May, Dubai stepped up institutionally. Investment Corporation of Dubai managing director Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Shaibani met Al-Sharaa to discuss channelling UAE capital into real estate, tourism and financial services, while Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills presented plans for two urban schemes in Damascus and Latakia, with a reported budget of $50bn.

Syria’s railway establishment has meanwhile signed a framework with the Latakia terminal’s operators to study moving containers by rail to dry ports at Adra, Hisyah and Aleppo – the first thread connecting a Gulf-invested port to the inland network.

Certification is key

Saudi Arabia and Qatar cleared Syria’s $15.5m World Bank arrears in mid-2025, restoring its eligibility for grants. International financial institutions are reciprocating and returning, but cautiously – and not with a view to driving cash volume.

The World Bank portfolio comprises 10 grant-funded projects worth just over $1bn over three years. The approvals so far are foundational: a $146m electricity grant restoring transmission lines and 400kV interconnections with Turkiye and Jordan; $225m across two grants for water and health; and $20m for public financial management.

Transport is next in the queue rather than in hand. Syrian Transport Minister Yarub Badr said in June that Syria is seeking World Bank grants of between $65m and $200m for railway rehabilitation, to restore a transit corridor that reportedly moved up to 115,000 trucks a year between the Turkish and Jordanian borders before 2011.

Broader financing has not followed, however. The IMF’s February mission extended no loan programme, nor was lending discussed, despite the fund noting tight fiscal management and a 2025 budget surplus.

The IMF, and the World Bank alongside it, named the blockage: a banking sector that needs rehabilitating, central bank independence yet to be built, and restricted banking access still obstructing wider recovery.

Gulf backers, for their part, can commit capital in a signing ceremony, but they cannot readily push it through a system only beginning to reconnect to the outside world.

Piecemeal reopening

A few key developments have occurred. In November 2025, the central bank (pictured) sent its first Swift message in 14 years to the US Federal Reserve, and its dormant account there was reactivated. Visa and Mastercard processing then resumed in May after a 15-year hiatus.

These networks were never the key constraint, however. Correspondent banks must agree to clear Syrian transactions – and many institutions will likely continue to hold back on compliance and financial-crime grounds until proposed reforms are in place.

The moves by foreign banks have been expectedly thin as a result, and Doha has led. Qatar National Bank’s Syrian unit – a legacy presence that rode out the war – became the first to switch card acceptance on, while Qatar’s Estithmar Holding has taken a 49% stake in Syria’s Shahba Bank, becoming the sole new foreign equity entry into the sector so far.

The pound, trading near £Syr13,700 to the dollar, still sits slightly weaker than it did in 2024 – the last year of the old regime.

The fragility of the machinery showed again in May, when Al-Sharaa moved central bank governor Abdulkader Husrieh – who had overseen the Swift reconnection – to the ambassadorship to Canada; instead installing Safwat Raslan, the head of the state reconstruction fund, as his successor.

Some analysts read it as a sign of tension within the leadership over monetary policy and governance. It also flashed a warning: an institution the IMF wants independent had just changed hands at the president’s discretion.

At a June conference, the new governor pledged “institutional work and well-studied planning” with no “improvised or unilateral decisions”, defining himself against the tenure he replaced.

Raslan’s first measures constituted delays and institutional loosening. He reversed a Husrieh restriction that had confined the banknote changeover to bank branches – readmitting exchange companies and money-transfer firms – and extended the exchange deadline to the end of July. It marked the third such extension of a window first set at 90 days from the 1 January launch, with the original deadline having slipped by four months.

Conditional funding

The cashflow blockage is moulding Damascus’s financing strategy: take the institutions’ endorsement, but decline their direct lending, and lean on funding with fewer strings.

Rather than qualifying for an IMF programme and accepting its conditions, it is routing donor money through the Syrian Development Fund, which is now run by the man just made central bank governor – concentrating the reconstruction purse and monetary authority in one pair of hands.

The approach spares Syria a debt overhang, but it also leaves reconstruction dependent on Gulf commitments that arrive at the pace of politics rather than as drawable finance.

The near-term tests are already dated. The banknote changeover – at 63% as of early June – must close by 31 July, and the banking reforms specified by the IMF must be implemented.

If both hold, the pledged billions will gain a financial system to land in. If either slips, Syria’s reconstruction remains a stack of signed announcements waiting on the financial machinery to catch up.

This month’s special report on Syria also includes:

> PROJECTS: Momentum builds for Syrian projects
> OIL & GAS: Activity ramps up in Syria’s oil and gas sector
> CONSTRUCTION: Prospects improve for Levant construction

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John Bambridge

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