multibilliondollar

Elaf fund will finance projects with buy-in from Saudi investors committing $2bn for two airports in Aleppo city.

Syria and Saudi Arabia have signed a major investment package spanning aviation, energy, real estate and telecommunications as Damascus’s new leadership seeks to rebuild after a devastating 14-year civil war.

Syrian Investment Authority chief Talal al-Hilali announced a swath of deals on Saturday, including the development of a new international airport in Aleppo, the launch of a low-cost Syrian-Saudi airline, and a telecommunications project called SilkLink aimed at turning the country into a regional hub.

Saudi Arabia has been a major backer of Syria’s new leaders, who took power after toppling longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, with this latest deal marking the biggest investment since the United States lifted sanctions on the country in December.

Saudi Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih said the newly launched Elaf fund, which aims to finance large-scale projects with participation from Saudi private-sector investors, would commit $2bn (7.5 billion Saudi riyals) to develop two airports in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Rebuilding Syria’s economy

Abdulsalam Haykal, Syria’s minister of communications and information technology, said his country will see nearly $1bn in investment in the telecommunications sector, with plans to lay thousands of kilometres of cable to boost connectivity between Asia and Europe.

Saudi budget carrier Flynas and the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority announced they signed an agreement to establish a new airline called “Flynas Syria”, which would be 51 percent owned by the Syrian side and is slated to start operations in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Syria’s Ministry of Energy also signed a water agreement with Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, which is known for running projects in power generation and desalinated water production plants in the Middle East and beyond.

Al-Hilali said the agreements targeted “vital sectors that impact people’s lives and form essential pillars for rebuilding the Syrian economy”.

Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Syria, commended the Saudi-Syrian deal on X. “Strategic partnerships in aviation, infrastructure, and telecommunications will contribute meaningfully to Syria’s reconstruction efforts,” he said.

But Benjamin Feve, senior research analyst at Karam Shaar advisory, sounded a more cautious note, saying the deals mattered “far more as a political signal than as an economic game changer” in the short term.

The government has faced criticism over the past year for making broad development promises based on written pledges with foreign investors, many of which have yet to be converted into binding contracts.

Carney has been under pressure from the opposition to lower prices of food and other essentials for lower-income people.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a multibillion-dollar package as part of a series of measures aimed at lowering the costs of food and other essentials for low-income families.

On Monday, Carney announced a five-year 25 percent boost to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) credit that starts this year.

The GST credit, which is being renamed the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, will provide additional, significant support for more than 12 million Canadians, Carney said in a statement.

The government will also provide a one-time top-up equivalent to a 50 percent increase this year to eligible residents.

“We’re bringing in new measures to lower costs and make sure Canadians have the support they need now,” Carney said.

The measures would cost the government 3.1 billion Canadian dollars ($2.26bn) in the first year and between 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($950m) and 1.8 billion Canadian dollars ($1.3bn) in each of the following four years, he told reporters at a news conference, according to the Reuters news agency.

While overall consumer price inflation in Canada has eased and came in at 2.4 percent for December, “food price inflation remains high due to global and domestic factors, including supply chain disruptions, higher US tariffs from the trade war and climate change/extreme weather”, Tony Stillo, director of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, told Al Jazeera.

The government is also setting aside 500 million Canadian dollars ($365m) from the Strategic Response Fund to help businesses address the costs of supply chain disruptions without passing those costs on to Canadians, and will create a 150 million Canadian dollar ($110m) Food Security Fund under the existing Regional Tariff Response Initiative for small and medium enterprises and the organisations that support them.

Changing landscape

“The global landscape is rapidly changing, leaving economies, businesses, and workers under a cloud of uncertainty. In response, Canada’s new government is focused on what we can control: building a stronger economy to make life more affordable for Canadians,” Carney said.

The new measures were unveiled on the day Parliament resumes after its winter break.

Opposition parties have urged Carney to reduce prices of daily goods, especially as sections of the economy have come under pressure from United States President Donald Trump, who has slapped 35 percent tariffs on the country as well as separate tariffs on steel, aluminium and lumber, leading to job losses in those sectors.

Over the weekend, Trump escalated his threats and said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on Canada if it makes a trade deal with China. Carney has been working on diversifying Canada’s exports away from the US, its biggest trading partner and to which nearly 80 percent of its exports went last year, including by increasing business with other markets like China.