Damascus- Members of the new cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Hussein Arnous, sworn in before President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday.
Later, President al-Assad chaired a meeting for the Cabinet in which he affirmed that priorities of work now are represented by production and finding job opportunities.
President al-Assad said that the tasks are so many and responsibilities are large and the success will be through “our ability to see the reality with all its details and complications.”
The President added that priority in the past period was for restoring security, but today it is for the production and finding job opportunities, as production is so essential for continuous stability especially after liberating the largest parts of the Syrian territories from terrorism.
President al-Assad said that the most significant point as a government is to define challenges existed in front of us and specify which of them are principal or secondary. Sometimes we plunge in the secondary challenges and ignore the main ones. To which of these challenges we are capable to resolve in the current circumstances and which of them are out of our capabilities ,and when “I talk about the internal circumstances ,I mean the general ones inside the homeland and at the same time the job responsibilities regarding the institution including the weakness, corruption, dysfunction etc.. of details that have negative impacts on the work.”
“Seeing all those details systematically is the way that makes us tackle every single status with a specific way and not to collect all these elements with each other and reach to nothing, but staying in the place,” the President said.
The President added “ when we see this vision accurately we can convey it to the citizens clearly and at that point the general vision in Syria will be clear and our dialogue will be objective and so the criticism and discussion in all issues ,and then we all can be immune ,and when I say all, I mean even the officials ,as some of them get influenced with propaganda ,when the issues are clear in their details, all become immune against the external propaganda that mainly focus on the citizen to turn him into an enemy to the state and to the homeland as a result.
President al-Assad added that partnership is so fundamental for our success at work and “we have to expand partnership as far as possible with the popular initiatives and agencies and the specialists, as broadening partnership means more ideas and less mistakes in addition to increasing the rate of success,” stressing that decentralization achieves balanced development between the richest and poorest regions and between the city and the countryside.
“Here comes the role of the local Administration… the local councils are most capable to recognize their local interests and propose solutions, and this helps the central authority and the official to distance from plunging in details and goes into the compass of strategic thinking, monitoring and setting plans etc… of the basic tasks he/she must fulfill… at the same time decentralization achieves balanced development between the richest and poorest regions,” the President said.
President al-Assad went to say that challenges are large, but priority is now for the livelihood challenge… the subsidies’ policy has been found since more than five decades, supporting citizens in the basic materials has never changed, but the strategy and mechanisms are changing according to the circumstances, we have the policy of offering subsidies to the peasant, supporting the agrarian crops, keeping the public sector and many others of big titles.
“I believe that the first thing in the government task is to review… to review the policy as strategy sets off from it,” the President said.
As for the investment law, President al-Assad said that the law was issued since several months, and “the echo was positive by those who have interest in this sector of the investors themselves, but as all know, the executive instructions of the law were not issued… the executive instructions are the formula, it is the basis of success for any law.
“There are the procedures… facilitating and simplifying procedures in other institutions which are not included in the investment law itself, the banking polices, the financial policies, the funding and the customs ones… so I believe that the most important point is to speed up the electronic services regarding the investment environment,” President al-Assad said.
Regarding corruption, the President said “We can talk in details about the retreat of ethics that led to the spread of corruption and this is right, but the State won’t wait for the improvement of ethics in order to combat corruption… we have to put criterion, regulations and clear mechanisms to help control corruption, of course I don’t talk about all citizens, but about those who are corrupts.”
“It is not possible to find a financial reform without a tax reform, therefore, our success in dealing or developing the tax system and improving the level of institutions and raising the performance of cadres, and when we can actually combat the tax evasion, and it is a big gap in the Syrian economy, the State will gain large amounts of money and be able to offer best services for the citizens,” President al-Assad said.
As for the alternative energy, the President said that the circumstances Syria is passing through regarding electricity and oil derivatives push the people to adopt the alternative energy and this is a good thing, but as this sector is new for the country, so it doesn’t subjugate to any policy or regulations, and “ I believe the urgent challenge now is to have a policy and regulation for this sector, otherwise there will be an exploitation by some greedy merchants who exploit the need of people for the energy.”
Regarding media, President al-Assad said that in addition to its traditional task, media should combat the adventitious concepts to the Syrian society as we are inside a global attack to defame and distort the national concepts of all states without exceptions with the aim of canceling the relation of humans with their Homeland.
“The second point is that the role of media is to be a bridge between the citizen and the official, and if the media has not intervened in proposing solutions, it wouldn’t find a position among citizens,” President al-Assad said.
Source: Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)