PARIS — Every day, Muhammad Hassan devotes the last three hours of work at his small grocery store in the Reef Dimashq city of Douma to sorting banknotes. He arranges Syrian pounds (SYP) by value and age, preparing to count out the large number of bills he will need for transactions with customers and wholesalers the next day.
“If you hand a trader a bundle of cash with multiple denominations, they get annoyed and might refuse to take it, since it’s a waste of time,” Hassan said. “They prefer large bills, like the SYP 5,000 banknote, over others. The smallest invoice is SYP 1 million—meaning 200 SYP 5,000 notes, or 2,000 SYP 500 notes.”
The grocery store owner sent Syria Direct a video of a package of money he planned to pay a wholesaler “for a small invoice,” he said. “This is a daily hardship, and has been the situation of everyone in Syria for years, with the deteriorating value of the pound.”
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The Syrian pound currently stands at SYP 11,500 to the US dollar, up from SYP 16,500 to the dollar in the days just before the Assad regime fell last December. Before the 2011 Syrian revolution broke out, it stood at around SYP 50 to the dollar.
The country’s transitional government plans to delete two zeros from the new currency set to be introduced at the start of 2026. Redenomination—slashing zeros without changing the currency’s underlying value—does not directly address underlying economic woes, but simplifies commercial transactions, particularly in a cash-based economy like Syria’s.
That is what matters most to Hassan. “If the number is smaller, transactions are easier and faster: a customer pays SYP 80, not SYP 8,000,” he said.
The owner of one money exchange shop in Damascus agreed that “deleting two zeros from Syrian currency is a practical step, one that will lighten the load on all citizens.”
Money changers deal with particularly large quantities of physical currency. “We carry sacks home with us every day, so as not to leave them at the office, and this increases daily expenses” in the form of transportation, he added, asking not to be identified.
His shop has a branch in the northern Aleppo city of al-Bab, where most rely on the stronger currency of neighboring Turkey. “When we were in the Aleppo countryside, people used the Turkish lira no matter how much it lost its value,” in recent years. “Regardless of the scale of the office’s activity, we transported money to our homes easily in a small bag.”
“Currently, if you want to carry the value of $10,000 in Syrian currency, you need sacks—like 50-kilogram sugar sacks—to move that amount,” he added.
A cosmetic change?
As the transitional government tells it, shaving off zeros is more than a cosmetic change, part of a broader monetary and economic reform package. In an interview with state-run al-Ikhbariya TV earlier this month, Central Bank Governor Abdul Qader Husrieh said introducing the new currency is an important piece of the puzzle.
By “replacing a stock of currency that has accumulated over 70 years,” with around 38 or 39 billion pieces of currency in circulation, “we can contain the monetary mass,” Husrieh said.
The central bank governor emphasized the material and psychological importance of redenomination for everyday citizens. Shaving off zeros means “simplifying transactions and greater ease,” he said, and another way of breaking with the Assad-era past.
“Deleting zeros is useful if there is relative economic stability in terms of exchange rates, inflation and growth,” in which case it “facilitates transactions,” economist Munaff Koman told Syria Direct. However, “if replacement comes without monetary stability, the operation will be meaningless, as with continued inflation we will go back to adding new zeros.”
Venezuela, for example, removed zeros from its currency twice over the past several years in response to rampant inflation. In 2018, the South American country cut five zeros from the bolivar, afterwards called the “sovereign bolivar.” In 2021, it deleted an additional six zeros, creating what is known as the “digital bolivar.” However, rather than restoring trust, the move was a failed experiment that drove a loss of confidence in the national currency and dependence on the dollar.
“Deleting zeros is a cosmetic measure that helps people psychologically, if accompanied by political and economic stability,” Koman said. People should “be aware that the process itself is not an economic reform—just an accounting and psychological adjustment.”
Koman took the view of other economists—one the Syrian government has not embraced—that “we do not need to delete zeros, but to issue several denominations higher than the ones in circulation,” printing SYP 10,000, SYP 50,000 and SYP 100,000 banknotes. This move would also make daily life easier, but “costs less than replacing the currency.”
Neighboring Iraq, where the value of the Iraqi dinar has plummeted against the dollar, has taken this option. In November 2015, the Central Bank of Iraq issued a 50,000-dinar note with the aim of reducing the volume of cash in circulation and facilitating large transactions, such as the purchase of cars and real estate.
Since becoming central bank governor, Husrieh has laid out a plan that starts with stabilizing Syria’s currency, aiming to curb inflation over a 15-year period. “We have succeeded in achieving stability,” he told al-Ikhbariya this month, calling it a “sign of confidence and proof of the effectiveness of the policies we are following, foremost among them fiscal discipline.”
Period of confusion
For years, Syrians have been forced to adjust to swings and spikes in inflation, leading to everyday hardships and confusion.
Damascus resident Zainab Othman, 30, recalled how, walking in al-Asruniya market, she once found a mirror for SYP 25,000 ($2.50). When she went to pay the seller, “he told me: What time do you think you’re living in? Check the price again,” she said.
Reading the tag again, Othman found it was SYP 250,000 ($22). She smiled it off, but felt “deeply embarrassed.”
Othman recalled the various stages of the Syrian pound’s precipitous decline—by more than 99 percent since 2011—and the “confusion” of adjusting to each new exchange rate. Despite the importance of redenomination as a “practical measure with a direct impact,” the move “will lose its significance if the pound continues to fall,” leaving residents “caught in that same confusion,” she told Syria Direct.
“Of course, we need time to get used to the new currency, and we will encounter difficulties when using the new banknotes and the old ones before they are withdrawn. Still, it’s a period to get through, and afterwards we will find transactions easier,” she said.
Initially, “confusion is inevitable due to changes in prices, which could be accompanied by market manipulation,” economist Koman said. The greater challenge, however, lies in old transactions and contracts, which “need careful redrafting, as a written contract for SYP 1 million becomes SYP 10,000, and there could be violations in this regard.”
While economic researchers forecast the future of the pound with the introduction of a new currency and warn against deleting zeros without a reform strategy to rebuild trust, Douma resident Fares al-Ahmad sees redenomination from his own perspective. What it means for him is “carrying several banknotes to buy a tank of oil or ghee, rather than carrying large amounts of cash.”
Many Syrians, including al-Ahmad, use backpacks or shoulder bags to carry enough cash for their shopping and day-to-day transactions. Even then, “sometimes I return home to bring more cash,” he said, the cost of the status quo measured in “more effort and time.”
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
