 I'm Layla Halal, director of the Middle East program at New America and we have with us today Alex Polak. He is director of the microfinance and microcredit department at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and he's currently based in Jerusalem. He is a seasoned and very successful microfinance practitioner with 22 years experience in the Middle East. He turned UNRWA's microfinance program into a self-sufficient and profitable multinational microfinance entity operating through its Jerusalem headquarters and four regional offices in Palestine, Jordan and Syria and through a network of 23 branch offices spread across the region. Under his leadership in the finance and microcredit department, UNRWA became the second largest and first fully financially sustainable financial operation in Syria. That's quite a success and for the past few years Alex has worked to adapt UNRWA's microfinance work in Syria admits the armed conflict and part of this work has included producing quarterly socioeconomic updates on the situation in Syria given the armed conflict and he's done this work in collaboration with the Syrian Center for Policy Research and the UNDP in in Syria. He regularly visits Syria amongst other areas of operation where UNRWA works and he is here today to discuss the latest report put out with the Syrian Center for Policy Research and the UNDP. Syria wore on development socioeconomic monitoring report. It covers April to June 2013 and we have copies available outside for you as you exit today. So with that Alex I'm going to turn it over to you and ask you to summarize the report and some of the key findings. Okay before I do that I would just like to explain a little bit about who the Syria Center for Policy Research are who are working with and Syria. They're a group of young academics. They're very concerned to remain independent from any side in the war and also they're very concerned about who finances the research. So they're working with the UN on this but they're very concerned not to be seen as party to any side. So one of the things they want to do is to make sure that we keep their independence as very clear and so they're not supporting government supporting opposition but they're highly dependent on data from government services. So their port is based on taking government service data and then modeling it to show the range of impacts of the armed conflict on the economy. Now methodologically I'll just very briefly say how they're developing the methodology. This is based on a counterfactual methodology where they're taking the economy up to the period of 2010 and then projecting growth and other factors as up to the current period. So that would be what the economy would look like as if there had been normal progression in the conflict had not emerged and then they're taking the current trends within the economy and then projecting them out and then the gap between the continuing trend and the actual trend is the band on which they're basing their economic analysis. So it's all projection but projection based on based on economic modeling and financial modeling. So if I could just go directly to the economy. The center developed a report in 2010 that covered 2012 that covered the whole of 2012 and we have contracted them to do quarterly studies so that we can see the changes within the economy and how that's affecting the lives of people and the main focus of the report is not on either party in the conflict but on looking at what the economic and social conditions of the population as a whole look like. Now that means so if I just give you some of the key data I think the in this second half of 2013 there was a major there's been a restructuring of the economy as the GDP has diminished quite dramatically and the major change that has occurred that with massive deindustrialization of the economy the agricultural sector has assumed a leading role in GDP. So in the second half of this year agriculture accounted for 54% of GDP and the previous in 2010 accounted for 27%. So you've had a big turnaround on the economy with agriculture and now account for a huge part of it but as agriculture is accounted for a larger share of the economy it's actually shrinking so the value of the agricultural economy in 2012 is less than it was in 2010 so that gives you some idea of the impact of what's going on in the economy. Now deindustrialization has taken place through a number of factors first of all you've had a significant flight of capital as people move businesses and resources outside the country some have moved to Turkey a few have moved to Egypt and but the most in the most dramatic effect on that period is since the beginning of conflict the economy has lost 103 billion dollars it's lost 50 billion dollars from its GDP and the most the most the most dramatic impacts the future it's lost just over 50 million dollars well it's lost 88 million dollars sorry 88 billion dollars excuse me 88 billion dollars on its capital stock its capital stock has been diminished dramatically and in any future reflation of the economy a reconstruction of the economy all those and those investments will have to be to be restored. Now the capital stock has been been lost through capital flight but also through looting and destruction of existing businesses so much of the damage to the economy has been through looting and destruction so that and that includes agriculture it includes housing stock includes an industrial stock. So the GDP has contracted in the first quarter of 2000 2013 by a third it contracted by 40% in the second half so there's a massive downswing in the economy that's having major impact throughout the structured economy so in that context we've lost the Syrian economy has lost 2.3 million jobs which means almost 10 million people are dependent on on their livelihood support for those 2.3 million jobs so half of the people in Syria almost half have lost have lost any any support for employment currently in the first half of the year the unemployment rate was it was just over 48% that had been down by 2% from the previous quarter which was over 50% and the reason was second half of the year is it is a peak time for agriculture so agriculture short-term agriculture employment reduced the unemployment rate but that's that will come back up to over 50% in the next quarter. So private investment also has contracted massively it contracted by 23% it's already down by 70% from between 2011-2012 but it contracted by 23% in the first quarter of 2013 and therefore that 12.8% in the second quarter and the total investment in the economy is just 10.3% in GDP which is actually less than the depreciation of capital stock in general so that also shows that any new investments in the economy are not keeping up with the depreciation rate so again a shrinking economy an economy that's no longer to sustain the livelihoods of people so the economy is in as in a state of ruination. Let me just turn to some of the other factors. Private consumption is also contracting contracted by 40% in the first quarter of 2003 and 47% in the second quarter now what does that mean in terms of people's lives and livelihoods it means that people are no longer purchasing what they were in the past and the reason for that is people do not have incomes poverty is increasing by the second the second half of this year between the beginning of the conflict and that 27-month period we had the 7.9 million people were sorry 7.9 million people became unemployed these are poor these were the new poor 4.4 million of them left below the they were in deep poverty and were not able to to to finance their basic needs so you have a massive destruction in the economy that's been led by a number of by many many factors government resources in terms of unemployment government no longer has the that no longer has a tax base that used to have so it's lost 2.3 million incomes which means income tax VAT so the government government fiscal policy is also facing major reduction because it cannot meet many of the basic needs at the same time there's been deflation in the car there's been the cost of living has risen by over 200% is projected to rise by 300% by the end of the year now what that means that people on fixed income public sector workers and others are being are being pitched into poverty because their income is only buying half what it was two years ago and at the same time there's been massive rise and the cost of food stops partially because of all of the international sanctions but also also because of the reduction and production of goods and services inside Syria which is actually pushing up the prices of goods and services for the whole people so if I turn to some of the socioeconomic indicators rather rather than the economic indicators and we can see that Syria now has a fastest growing refugee population of any country in the world and by the end of the year it's likely to be the largest population refugee population and worldwide overtaken Afghanistan with with 22.4 million people so really you're going to see most of those people are moving to largely to Lebanon and and Jordan and that's putting huge pressures on on the domestic economies of those countries who are trying to cope with that and a lot a lot of the international aid as me as a strong focus on Jordan and Jordan and Lebanon at the moment within that context of the movement of people about the population has been hauled out by over 8% so you have you have what when we when we produced the report we were was 1.73 million refugees within the region but another 1.3 million persons who'd actually who'd actually migrated voluntarily so there's a mixture of refugee and migration going on but also you have massive internal displacement often multiple times almost 5 million people have been internally displaced within Syria from different parts of Syria large part in Damascus Aleppo Idlib homes Hamad has been massive displacement and there are also so large scale displacement often multiple times as people move to seek shelter and safe havens and other places those places then become themselves become unsafe and people have to move and more many times one of the factors in internal displacement are people are moving from nuclear family households into extended family household so for example people who live in a household of mother and father and three or four children are now moved into households where you've got grandparents brothers and sisters and their families and children so up to in the central Damascus area where many people have moved into you have households extended households of up to 30 people living in a house for six people so that has been putting huge pressures on people but what it's meaning is that there's a because of the because of the loss to the economy because of loss of income households have had to come together to support each other with less resources in their hand a few years ago in terms of what would happen just put the context of of the economic losses and a broader context if the economy was began to reflect today at a sort of at 5% a year I would take the Syrian economy 30 years to get back to where it was in 2010 so you can see from that that the economic losses have been have been massive now one of the 30 years to recover to the same level of GDP that city had in 2010 with a current growth level of 5% per year so compounding year by year to take 30 years to get back to where it was now a lot of those losses are they're not going to be it's not I mean clearly it's not any reconstruction is not going to take place like that would be a huge investment in the beginning period which will reflate will refloat the economy but it won't take it up to the next level because it's been a massive outflow within the within the refugee population and the migrant population there's been a massive outflow of human capital so if you just take some of the basic statistics from the from the health sector the number of doctors per number of not the sort of doctor population ratio has gone from one doctor for 700 people to one doctor to 4,000 for just over 4,000 people so that shows a large-scale outflow of healthcare professionals from the sector either moving on into the refugee population or be part of this place people or actually migrating to the Gulf and other countries looking for employment in the health care sector as well we also have massive loss to infrastructure but 30% of the public hospitals are no longer operating effectively 50% of the primary health care services are dysfunctional one of the issues one of the key issues there are most chronically sick and long-term people require long-term medicines and long-term services they get most of the services through the primary health care primary health care sector primary health care sector is no longer able to service many of those people but at the same time even when they even when they're open many of the health care centers don't have access to the drugs and dialysis then they need to provide so many many chronically old people are now becoming falling into serious serious health conditions that may lead to the deaths the other factor on that as we the estimation is that that over over hundred five over a hundred thousand people have been killed during the war it's also estimated that on a ratio one to four about two percent of the Syrian population have been killed maimed or injured in the war so we're talking about a very large about two percent of the population now looking at the education side there's a major crisis going on in the education sphere only half of all school children are currently in school there's also been large-scale damage to to many schools three thousand schools are no longer operating over six hundred are now displacement centers for displaced people so they're they're not functioning now that is different across different different areas in the country so if you take somewhere like Lataki and Tartus school attendance rate is around 90 percent if you look at somewhere like Aleppo it's close to zero so that the long-term implications of that that the current divisions within Syrian society are being reinforced by will be reinforced in the future because of the loss of school term and because of the number of school years lost so that will be actually very difficult to make up for school term the same as the same is also happening in me and this in higher education there's been many many students are deferring their higher education of current time and because of the instability and and lack of well they don't know where there be many of them are having to travel long distance to be university so their families are not wishing them to travel this is particularly true for for women students who whose families want them and hand they don't want them far from the family so education is now being deferred to many areas and also you have you have the same problem as you have in the healthcare sector you have you have the you have the the flight of many professors and teachers from the educational system again as refugees as migrants and as Intel is placed so they have no longer access to their employment one of the big factors that's that's happening is the education the education system the public health care and public health care system and public and public the public sector generally the population that the employees are all on fixed incomes and their incomes are not going basically the incomes only stretch half as far as they used to so that's also creating a crisis for the government because government government support depends very much on people having employment and so that their lives are not being completely ruined by the situation so the government has been pushing up pushed up salaries in the past paid that will but that's going to impact negatively on on the debt ratio of the government because that's been rising quite dramatically as well so the national debt is 174% currently of GDP that's being financed both internally from local sources and from and from international loans mainly from mainly from Iran and so even but primarily Iran so that is a factor that's going to affect the government in the future so the sustainability of the economy is really in is in some serious doubt and I think that is really the one of the main the main the main factors that will affect the future now what we have been one of the reasons why we are looking why we are doing these reports is a lot there's a lot of international assistance going in at the moment to support the United Nations situation so mainly in food aid health health care cash assistance for the poor and most duty but one of the problems we are seeing is that people are losing any sort of ability to maintain livelihoods I mean we are now talking about millions of people without any source of income what you we also see on the ground is a massive rise in informality so there's been a huge rise in the informal sector where people are trading fruits and vegetables so many people have opened up these micro entrepreneurship activities which are creating a basic income for the families but it's not sufficient to sustain the families at a at a reasonable level so really these are just coping strategies to living in poverty the other big factor in the economy there has been a significant rise in economies of violence so there's a lot there's significant amount of economic violence and politics of economic violence mainly through extortion racketeering kidnapping and various other elements which are extremely which are pushing out in many areas making it very difficult for regular business people to survive and in that context there's been in certain areas has been the contract law has been dissolving very rapidly so it's very difficult to operate in an economy where where there's violence and extortion going on and trying to run a regular business so business networks are also collapsing if I don't know if I should go into the sector or not but there's some key I mean industry is is really reduced by about 70% the the transport sector is also down mainly because of the danger of transportation so transport people don't travel travel very much throughout within the country so people have reduced their travel needs as much as possible because the possibility of all being of being kidnapped are held at checkpoints also there's been a lot of a lot of hijacking of vehicles transporting goods and services and the agricultural sector there's been a large loss of livestock as livestock has been has been looted and the agriculture sector although it's become the biggest sector of the economy it is also facing a huge increase in price and prices for for for inputs for fertilizers and scepticides and and suits and water system water management system so that the whole economy is really the only thing word we can use to describe it as we can say it's in recession but really it's more in state of a ruination than recession okay thanks Alex this is um obviously very depressing picture hard for many of us to hear but good to to understand the this this side of the picture because we frequently are just hearing the side of of the fighting and the future of Syria obviously is a big question and I'd like to get your perspective a little bit if you could step away from sort of your particular role and reporting as in the context of this effort looking looking forward to what perhaps could be you mentioned some coping strategies but but what could we do to to help mitigate mitigate the the economic down slide in the scenario of continued protracted conflict well I mean there's many things I think there's many things that can be done but they're all very they're not going to generate huge income they're not going to generate growth they're basically be coping instruments that would help communities build livelihoods maintain livelihoods and that can be small-scale that can be small public small-scale public work activities community based public work activities within communities that can hold together and work together and so that can generate I can generate income it can also generate local purchasing power it can help small businesses within the community to get together so for example if you're working to repair destroyed buildings you can you can either do that through through self-help projects within the community by providing materials and support for community members and households to rebuild and we and replenish windows waterworks and various other things or you can actually you can scale it up a little bit and employ small-scale jobbing builders to do repair and maintenance that puts money into the economy locally it also means you buy materials for from local companies local businesses local shops which generates a sort of an internal economy but these issues are these are extremely limited because I mean they're not refloring the economy they're just keeping certain communities with a basic means of sustaining livelihoods but humanitarians have not have not really and all of the matter in situations around the globe they've never really been able to find this mixture of been able to work with humanitarian assistance at the same time livelihood support and maintain a focus on human development and that's one of the things we want this report to do is to keep a focus on human development issues so they don't get lost when governments and others are looking at the situation because often we only see what's going on through the prism of the two warring parties and the people supporting the two warring parties what we try showing this report is the impact of the the armed conflict on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Syrians and I think when you see the data and you see the extent of the data it's it's it's it's extremely it's extremely disturbing for the future and the future livelihoods of people and particularly young people who are most at risk in this situation okay we have about 25 minutes left so I'll open it up to the audience to ask questions we have one here in the front row thank you thank you dr. Abbas coming from the Embassy of Iraq what you say here first thanks for the excellent presentation what you really say here brings flashbacks from my home country back in the 2005-200 maybe even four five six seven my question is this there is a lot of focus as you mentioned both on the on on the fight and the outcome of the fight and the political aspect of it but from an economic perspective what comes to mind is what does this the current situation economically leave for whoever is going to be following Assad or for Assad himself if he survives in terms of maintaining a solvent government or regime economically speaking given what you said that it would take 30 years to bring Syria back at the right growth rate of 5% to to the kind of the situation that was before the conflict bearing in mind that the situation before the conflict was not that great as well meaning Iraq we have the oil and 100 billion dollar income but Syria doesn't have that luxury so if you want to reflect on that for us that would appreciate it yeah I mean look at any reconstruction period it's not going to be five I mean in a period of immediate reconstruction you might actually have a hundred and a hundred hundred percent growth on the current level because there'll be one would assume that would be vast sums of money coming in that there'd be a mobilization of expatriate capital the money coming in for the business community that businesses would be encouraged to to to invest particularly from the expatriate community who's not loved in Syria so I mean similar to I mean if I use the example of Palestine at the beginning of the peace process in Palestine you had a large inflow of both foreign capital and expatriate Palestinian capital that that boosted the economy for a number of years so so you had quite significant growth 20 30 percent growth over a very short period of time but again it's not just in Syria you're looking at you're looking at investments of hundreds billions of dollars to refloat the economy and again that depends on the type of political settlement you have first the institutional structure is in some disarray the bath party for example is still a strong institutional structure within Syria but it is it's a whole shell of what it used to be and so the main thing going forward is how do you how do you re-energize the institutional structure in Syria to make them capable of being part of the of the refloat the flotation of the of the economy and I think I mean again that depends on the type of political settlement that's arrived at in the future well and it also seems that the country if you look at the country now I mean there are different conditions prevailing in different parts of the country and there's been more destruction in certain areas or different cities than others and so the industrial base may be more in a better position to be revived in in one part of the country rather than others you know so it seems to me that there also would need to be some thinking about where interventions may best be sustainable do you have a sense right now where what parts of Syria are doing better than others well I mean it's very clear the parts are doing better Latakia, Tautus and Sweden have been largely immune from the conflict and I know just say we have and Syria we had five microfinance branch offices four in Damascus one in Aleppo our branch office in Aleppo was closed it was on the front line so we had to close it and move the staff somewhere else and Duma our office is closed and Zainab our office is closed and Yarmouk our office is closed so we had one up until a few months ago we had in Damascus yeah we had one operating office in Damascus and we then we opened three new branch offices and Tautus, Sweden and Latakia and those have grown very significantly within a very short period of time so there are pockets of the where there's still contract law is still an operation policing systems are operation so you can continue regular contract you've also had a large outflow of business people from Aleppo to Latakia but they're not operating in any way close to the nature they were when they were in Aleppo and if you take Aleppo Aleppo was one of the main industrial centers of the country and I had very strong economic links to Turkey those links have all been severed many of the business people have particularly the Armenian business community have left have left Aleppo many have gone some have gone to Latakia many have gone to Armenia so we it's not just a case of putting money in you have to build the previous marketing networks that were there in the past and it's not clear that those can be reestablished very easily because when one market link breaks up the dominant partners tend to create new market links and they just don't go back to the old marketing links so I think it's going to be a very difficult process to to put together so that again and that depends again depends very much on the nature of the political settlement because these things tend to be trade links tend to have very strong political dimensions to them can you introduce say your name my name is Bessambar Abendi I'm a Syrian how does the regime can sponsor or support or finance the army taking consideration or the figures that you mentioned it seems there's no income there is still I mean there's not no income there's but I mean about five billion has been I mean from all the data we have we recognize but five billion been moved from public good for example social services health care education has been moved to military practices so I mean by the very nature of of a country being in a war situation it's the government's going to put as much money into it's going to prioritize putting money into into military expenditures to achieve what it's trying to achieve and so I mean they're looking they're looking very much at the short term issues on that they're not really they don't currently have a focus on the long-term development issues I mean it's mostly about wanting the war and surviving from an economic perspective but at some point they're going to have to look at this because because the economy is becoming increasingly unsustainable that's going to have significant impact on the government because the government depends on maintaining a workforce who depend on it for for their living and if they can't sustain that that will create critical challenges for them in the future and that requires that basically requires continuing subvention either direct aid from from allies or from or foreign credits from their allies. Third row back from the back. From the front sorry. My sense isn't correct me if I'm wrong that of the funds going in you know in support of those you know who have who have left their homes whether migrating refugees or internally displaced that a large portion of those funds are going you know to support the refugees in Jordan and Lebanon for understandable reasons it must be very difficult you know to do but on the other hand the internally displaced population is quite huge I mean is that correct and do we have any sense of how the internal if it is correct you know then how the internally displaced populations are faring and how they're coping. Yeah I mean look the entire displaced the displaced both in the areas where which are under the opposition control and the displaced in areas under under government control for the UN we don't we don't have the authorization to do cross-border support so we we have we have very little impact and the in the in the opposition areas because we're basically in order for us to operate we have to we have to work through currently still have to work through through through government permission to serve areas which they allow us to work in and that is mainly in areas controlled by them and in general there's the substantial aid going into all areas now of course the level of need and and the amount of money available there's no match between them the significant gap so people are not getting what they need to survive but they're getting a minimum that's helping them mitigate the poverty they're living in but it's certainly not providing for the full range of needs now in the opposition areas there are also NGOs and other work others working there although I don't have any idea of the volume and volume and the actual how widespread it is but on both sides there's people in great need with insufficient support going to them I just to point out as you mentioned I mean there's some six billion internally displaced and some of those people are in camps and you know very particular areas locations and many of them are just living with families and are internally displaced within cities you know some people moving continuously so they so some I imagine are still part of whatever economic activity is still left whereas others are probably very much dependent on on humanitarian aid whether they're in the opposition area or on the border camp well I think there's two things with the internal displaced that you have to look at you have internally displaced people who have no source of income whatsoever so they've lost their jobs and lost the livelihoods you have other internally displaced people who have lost their homes and have had to move from from their communities but they still have employment so the the difference in the quality of life between the two groups is very dramatic so I mean I just came back from Damascus last week and when I was in Damascus you see big family households but also you see in most of the parks in Damascus there are displaced people sleeping in the parks so every night there's hundreds and some of the parks thousands of people just living there without any other means of livelihood or support now they're getting they're getting food some food and blanket distribution and things like that from NGOs and others but the difference within the within the internally displaced communities the difference between the people themselves are very diverse based on if they have income sources or not do you have any sense of what percentage of the population is are still collecting state salaries I think a large segment and a large segment the state sector is still collecting salaries many what we know I don't have a figure but what I know from many many people have sent their families outside the country and they continue to work in the government so if they're if they're they send their families to Lebanon they go down to Lebanon every every other weekend to see their families so people are staying working just to create income so that keeping their families outside the country we had a question here and then over there Hugh McElrath retired intelligence officer irrespective of political or patriotic or religious motivation to what extent is it a rational economic decision for a military age man to join armed or paramilitary forces on either side in order say to support a family well I mean if you're I think it's fairly rational choice I mean you've seen militias all over the world and places of violent conflict they're often the only way you can actually support and sustain your family so I mean there's an economic not just ideological sort of determinant and why people would fight on if they're getting money to fight and there's no other source of income then it happens we've seen it for years in Palestinian camps in Lebanon people would join different militias at different time because they would get income from from being part of a militia and I think that's the same thing and as I say what the economy is of violence often there's there are groups who actually live off what they can take from communities to survive and again that gives legitimacy to how they survive okay we had the question and my far right middle Chris, Chris Straub from the Amar Foundation those state salaries and I presume military salaries on the regime side as well are being paid in the Syrian pounds yeah so what's what's the trajectory of the Syrian pound if the if this current economic slide continues and when does it become completely valueless okay well the set just give you some of the data on it when the conflict started the the equivalent value the Syrian pound was around 50 Syrian pounds to one US dollar it's currently 170 169 Syrian pound to one US dollar so you've had massive devaluation in terms of the value of the currency a few got up to 300 about a few months ago but the the central bank has managed to get it back to 170 179 now it's been like that for about three months so what was three months and so there's some stability in the currency because it was it was really shooting up for quite a while but now the the management of it has been brought it down to to a stable situation whether it can sustain that stable situation remains to be seen but but that's an indication also that that the government has some sort of stability within its fiscal processes it's operating it's been controlling I mean there's a number of parallel markets and in the country so the the gap between the parallel mark the black market and the and the official exchange rate has come down dramatically so in fact for a few last last week when I was in Syria the official exchange rate was actually higher in the black market rate for the first time ever so there is some they're bringing some control into the currency and exchange exchange rates at the moment but there's no guarantee that that can be sustained over the long term and over the long term you would think it wouldn't be one would expect to see in that context to see some form of dollarization of the currency ongoing but so far it's not really happening and the the central bank has been very has put a lot of pressure on merchants and others not to stop pegging their pegging trading into two dollar rates but yeah it's a factor but I at the moment it's not it's not a destabilizing factor but I think and over the long term it will be but as I said before it's the big factor is the cost of living the cost of living has risen by 200% it's likely rise to 300% and if you're on a fixed income as most state state employees that means you're you just can't live the way you used to before now fuel prices are doubling food prices are doubling basic commodity prices are are inflating so it's a it's a it's that as a destabilizing factor for the government the government is giving food subs it's still giving food subsidies for basic commodities it's still procuring goods from farmers at fixed prices so so they've still got some they've still got some elements of fiscal control on the general economy but the general economy is not generating generating the well the the income that can actually float the tax base so the tax basis is declining quite dramatically which means the ability to the government to invest is is going down now the government expenditure has growing there's three elements of growth in the GDP which have continued over the speed one is public sector expenditures the other is service expenditures and the other growth sector NGOs so NGO the NGO share of GDP has grown it's still it's still a small share of GDP but it shows that most of the service sector today which is still the growth poll still a growth poll in the economy it's all focused on providing humanitarian assistance to millions of people but that again is not a it's not it's not a positive economic trade it's actually a negative economic trade because that money has to come from somewhere to serve non-productive purposes we just have a couple minutes left so I'll take how many questions do we have left just one okay a little bit about the impact of the informal market locally I was wondering if you could talk some about whether the team had any estimates about what its impact has been sort of as a broader network both black market trade smuggling and sort of how much of the economy has been made up in that market well first of all the the informal economy and I'm not talking about the economy within the major cities that is mean it's mainly it's mainly trading so it's mainly trade so there's not it's not creating it's not creating additional value it's just it's just sharing a value between an increasing number of people so you're just chopping the cake into small on smaller pieces and people are getting a part of that which is allowing them to survive but there's very little within the within the informal economy that can be seen as productive in nature I mean there's some some home based manufacturing and crafts food processing things like that but all on a very very small scale you have household production going on small animal husbandry raising basically to supplement nutritional requirements but it's so far it's not very much of its entering the market for sale I've heard that the oil production which used to compromise 25 percent of the GDP has also become informalized can you comment on that yeah I mean the the government I mean well the state oil industries that was meant source of hard currency that has gone completely because most most of the oil wells are in areas controlled by the opposition now there's been a lot of smuggling of oil across borders and it's been controlled by by different groups not nestly controlled in a unified way but very divided among each other the oil petroleum level has just it's gone down I think to around 14,000 miles of there so it's shrunk by about 75% also the oil wells have been have also been destroyed and the petroleum producing plants have been destroyed so there's been large-scale destruction of the ability to produce petroleum and and other products from so mostly it's the export of raw and processed materials now thank you Alex for coming here today and for sharing your expertise again the report the latest report is available outside I suspect that some people may wish to receive future copies because you're doing these reports on a quarterly basis and might you tell us how we can find them yeah well the reports are the reports are released on the on the website on our website yeah and yeah but also these Syria Center for Policy Research will be producing a report in Arabic and so it will be available in Arabic on its website yeah yeah the Palestinian I mean very small part of Syrian population right we're talking about just under half a million people but where they are located geographically means that proportionately they've suffered more than people in general so I mean they're mainly in places like Daraa, Homs, Hama and most particularly the place where they've been hardest has been in Yermouk where half the Palestinian refugee population in Syria live I mean I could just give you some because we've just done a survey of the clients we have microfinance clients so if I take the the case of Yermouk 88.8 percent of our clients in Yermouk were displaced 45 percent of them had their homes and houses damaged or destroyed 45 percent of them had their businesses looted and robbed and cut only 14 percent still had an operating business so I mean most of them have lost their sources of income the majority of the Palestinian population from Yermouk are living outside Yermouk 43,000 and 43,000 registered in Lebanon just about 10% of the population another 8,000 in Jordan so quite proportionally high share of Palestinians have been had but as I say in terms of the in terms of the overall situation they're in a better condition than many people because they do have direct support in Lebanon and Jordan if they can reach those places but we're still operating our operations are still going on and homes and Hama and Aleppo so we still have operations taking place and all of the areas where Palestinian refugees are located so they're still getting food aid cash assistance medical help mostly skills are still functioning some areas not but but so they've still got the right access to services but the most the most difficult place was Yermouk where it's estimated that only a very small percentage of Palestinian refugees remain in remain in remain in Yermouk okay okay we have consensus to take one more question if you can be brief please yes thank you Molly Williamson Middle East Institute what kind of cooperation or scrutiny do you have for your operations from the Syrian government we I mean we work with UNRWA we work our direct partner in Syrian government as GAPAR which is the General Association for Palestinian Refugees and Syria so everything we do we coordinate with GAPAR and our coordination has gone on has been going on essentially since the 50s and so we have a very I think I'd say in terms of coordination to deliver services we have very good cooperation with with that government agency thank you again Alec