BEIRUT/ABU DHABI — For a government under siege from rebels and international sanctions, President Bashar Al-Assad's administration shows no lack of confidence in being able to go on feeding its people. But as official media offer glowing reports of new bakeries serving up tasty, subsidized bread and ministers assure Syrians of ample stocks in state granaries, repeated failures of tenders to import wheat and other staples tell a different story — one echoed in tales from the streets of scarcity and rising prices. Syria's worst harvest in decades, as civil war rages, means more pressure to import on a government whose currency reserves are dwindling — even if support from Assad's sponsor Iran, and a shrinking population to support as Syrians flee the country and provinces fall to rebel control, ease the burden and buy time. “Extreme urgency” is a phrase cropping up in increasingly frequent emails and faxes that Syria's state food import board has been sending to firms trading grain in world markets, inviting them to tender for shipments of wheat, rice and sugar. Traders in Europe and Asia speak of invitations every other week, compared to every other month in normal times. Yet for all the urgency in the emails from Damascus, tender after tender has failed to end in goods being shipped - mainly, traders say, because Syria insists on unrealistic conditions that simply ignore how financial sanctions have crippled its ability to pay. “The government is in extreme denial about its food stocks,” said one trader based in the United Arab Emirates whose firm had long been a supplier to Syria, notably of rice, but refused to bid at auctions where the chances of payment seemed remote. Now, he said: “We have just stopped dealing with Damascus.” Like other traders with knowledge of Syrian tenders, he spoke on condition of anonymity. Quite how Syria's stocks of grain stand is impossible to say with confidence. State grain buying agency Hoboob, or the General Establishment for Cereal Processing and Trade, insists it has 3 million tons of wheat in store, equivalent to a year's supply for the entire 22 million population. Many engaged in the cereals trade, both inside and outside Syria, doubt that. Estimates collated by Reuters from more than a dozen grain officials and local traders in late July after the harvest suggested Syria would need to import 2 million tonnes of wheat in the coming year to meet normal needs after a crop of 1.5 million tonnes, under half the prewar norm. Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi denounced last week what he called US psychological warfare aimed at undermining the economy and told state media the government had vital supplies. The same week, an item on state news agency SANA appeared to address concerns among people in the capital about shortages. Some four million Syrians need food aid, says the UN. Subsidized state loaves, costing just 15 Syrian pounds or a few US cents, are still available in government-held areas, though people can wait for hours in line, pushing up market prices for bread that is privately baked, or diverted from state stores, to as much as 10 times those of subsidized loaves. — Reuters
