RIYADH: Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday his country had managed to secure $28 billion worth of investments in the 10 months since the 2024 overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The president cited the figure while speaking in Saudi capital Riyadh at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference , where he was touted as a special guest during the ninth-edition of the forum.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a major supporter of Sharaa, joined the audience at the panel where the Syrian president was speaking.
Since Assad’s fall, “investments amounting to approximately 28 billion dollars have entered” the country, Sharaa said.
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“The opportunity in Syria is enormous, and there’s room for everyone,” he added in a bid to assure potential investors at the conference.
“I believe that today the world will benefit greatly from Syria. It will be an important commercial hub for transporting goods,” said the president.
Syria has begun the mammoth task of trying to rebuild its shattered economy, after over a decade of war saw tens of thousands killed, millions displaced and cities flattened.
For decades, the country was also unable to secure significant investments due to layers of sanctions targeting its government.
Earlier this month, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion.
Since the overthrow of Assad last year, Saudi Arabia has been courting Damascus’s new leaders, as the kingdom seeks to draw closer the country long dominated by Iran and Russia.
In May, the Saudi Crown Prince convinced US President Donald Trump to promise to lift Syria sanctions.
He also arranged a landmark meeting between Trump and Sharaa, a former jihadist who spent five years in US custody in Iraq.
The kingdom has also deployed its vast oil wealth in pursuit of its goals.
In April, Riyadh vowed alongside Qatar to settle $15 million in Syrian debt to the World Bank.
And in July, Saudi Arabia signed investment and partnership deals with Syria valued at $6.4 billion to help with post-war reconstruction.
For its part, Syria signed agreements in August worth more than $14 billion, including investments in Damascus airport and other transport and real estate projects, state media reported.
For months, Al-Sharaa has been criss-crossing the globe, meeting with world leaders including former arch-rivals in Russia, as he has sought to shore up both diplomatic and economic support for Syria’s new government.
In May, Syria signed a $7 billion energy deal with a consortium of Qatari, Turkish and US companies as it seeks to revive its crippled power sector.
Meanwhile more than one million Syrian refugees have already returned from abroad and nearly double that number have returned to their places of origin after being displaced inside the country, UN figures show.
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