Turkey: Syria is to lose 100 million USD annually from the transport revenues

"Syria is to lose 100 million USD annually from the transport revenues" said Turkey. Ankara is opening alternative roads for exporting goods to the Middle East and the Gulf in order to avoid its restive state. At the moment Turkey is still trading with Syria but since its relation with Damascus worsened it is sought founding new trade roads towards the Middle East and the Gulf.

According to Reuters, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that "Syria is the one to lose in this process due to founding alternative trade  roads ", adding that it (Turkey) has completed talks for exporting goods by sea to Egypt this coming January then transported by land to the Gulf.

Turkish trucks will be carried on ship to Egypt through its port “Nouwaibe'e” for entering Jordan and the port of “Saffaja” to enter Saudi Arabia. "Other transport roads are in a brown study and after turning to alternative roads Syrian loss regarding revenues will mount up to more than 100 million USD a year" Turkey says.

According to the Turkish MFA the amount of 100 million USD was the result of calculating the number of trucks (46,000 trucks) that did their transit across Syria during 2010, and the amount ($2135 per truck) that Damascus imposed as a custom duty on those trucks. Earlier this month ,Turkey – the Islamic- but- non-Arab followed the footsteps of the Arab League for imposing sanctions against Syria and said that  such sanctions are to target the government including freezing the state assets, suspending financial bargains and imposing travel bans on senior officials. In reaction, Syria suspended working with the "Bilateral Agreement for Trade" and imposed a 30% custom tariff on all imports from Turkey.

Turkey was a main trade partner to Syria. The total value of the bilateral trading mounted up to about 2,5 billion USD last year. During 2010 Syria gained more than 10% of its whole revenue from the Turkish imports. The Syrian goods made 0.3% of the of the Turkeys imports.