Businesses across Syria have been devastated by the destruction inflicted by the three-year civil war, and the economy could take 30 years to recover to its pre-conflict level, a United Nations survey warns.
The fighting "saw the economy lose a total of US$84.4 billion [$98.8 billion] over the first two years of the conflict ... Even if the conflict ceased now and GDP grew at an average rate of 5 per cent each year, it is estimated that it would take the Syrian economy 30 years to return to the economic level of 2010," the UN said in the study published yesterday.
During the war, Syria had experienced "massive de-industrialisation, dilapidation and degradation", the study said.
Businesses had closed or gone bankrupt, and those that had not had been looted or destroyed by war, the study said.
Capital flight - people getting their money out of the country - had been massive.
