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Syria flooded with Pepsi and Pringles as rulers open economy
End of Assad-era restrictions on dollars, exorbitant duties and extortion leads to boom in foreign goods
Syria has been flooded with imports in the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s ousting, with the end of dollar restrictions and exorbitant tariffs leading to a boom in goods that disappeared from shelves during the civil war. “Our main task in this period is to pump blood into the arteries of the economy, preserve institutions and serve citizens,” Maher Khalil al-Hasan, the minister of internal trade, told state news agency Sana this month. He attributed this to the end of widespread extortion under Assad, in which farmers en route to wholesalers would have to hand over chunks of their produce at military checkpoints, many run by the infamously brutal Fourth Division of Bashar’s brother Maher.
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