Hama Governorate Earns Billions from Auctioning Absentees’ Farmland

The Treasury generated SYP 32 billion by enabling farmers to invest in lands abandoned by their owners, SYP 22 billion of which has already been collected, according to Mahmoud Zanboua, the Governor of Hama, who spoke with the state-owned Tishreen newspaper on January 30. This marks the first time an official source has discussed the value of revenues from the Hama Governorate’s public auctions of the lands of people forcibly displaced to opposition areas.

The governor stated that the owners left these lands due to “the circumstances at the beginning and middle of the war.” It is unclear from the governor’s remarks whether these revenues include all auctions held since 2019 or just the latest one held for the 2023-2024 season. Also, he did not mention the revenues made by investors of these lands.

According to the governor, the purpose of the auctions is to prevent anyone from investing illegally in the lands of the absentees or through what he called “al-salbata,” which in colloquial Arabic means seizing others’ properties illegally. According to Mr Zanboua, the auctions also aim to support the state treasury and ensure the protection of public funds according to legal principles, seemingly referencing Public Contracts Law No. 51 of 2004, which the Hama Governorate has adopted since 2021 as a legal document to legislate public auctions for investing in the lands of the absentees. Moreover, in its Decision No. 12011 issued in October 2022, the Council of Ministers broadened the scope of such auctions outside of Hama by holding public auctions for investing in the lands of the absentees across Syrian territories under the regime’s control.

In 2019, the Hama Governorate formed technical field committees to determine the ownership of agricultural lands in areas taken over by regime forces during their military operations against the opposition. These committees identified lands owned by absentees who were forcibly displaced or had fled to opposition areas and could not invest in their lands. Since 2019, the Hama Governorate has been organising public bidding processes for investing in the lands of absentees based on documents issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform with the approval of the Prime Minister’s Office. These documents specify the conditions for investing in barren lands, those planted with olive or pistachio trees, and clarify how relatives can invest in them.

The public auctions in Hama have gone through several phases since 2019 before settling on their current form, which consists of three categories: the first is specifically for first-degree relatives who are allowed to invest in their relatives’ vacant lands offered for agricultural investment without entering public auctions. The first degree of kinship includes the father, mother, wife and children. This category must obtain security clearance and provide an inheritance inventory statement, family statement, or civil status record proving the kinship relationship with the absent landowner. They must also pay the investment fee set by the governorate in the auction announcements.

The second category is for second and third-degree relatives, who must agree among themselves on who will invest in the land, provided that they pay the value of the highest bid made on the same land in a public auction session to invest in it, in return for a 10 percent discount off the highest bid’s value. The second degree includes the grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister and grandchildren. The third degree encompasses uncles, aunts and nephews.

The third category of auctions includes all investors who are not relatives.

The Hama governorate’s revenues from the auctions are not limited to the investment fee provided by the winning bidders in the public auctions but also include the price of the technical dossier submitted by the investor at SYP 35,000 for each land bid and the preliminary insurance fee set for the 2024 season at SYP 50,000 per hectare of irrigated land and SYP 20,000 per hectare of rain-fed land, in case the investor defaults and fails to fulfil their financial obligations. The Ministry of Finance imposed a provisional seizure in 2022 on the movable and immovable assets of an investor from Hama due to their failure to pay the dues of an investment contract for land planted with pistachios.

A farmer from Latamneh city, north of Hama, who has been living in a displaced persons camp in the Qah area of northern Idlib since 2018, told The Syria Report that he is unable to find a way to benefit from his land left behind in Latamneh. The farmer stated that he inherited the land from his father, who purchased it in 1995 but never registered it in his name in the Land Registry. It remains to this day in the name of the original seller. Therefore, the seller’s relatives are currently investing in his land.

Meanwhile, a farmer currently residing in Latamneh City told The Syria Report that public auctions have become mandatory for all absentee lands. He added that he was unable to obtain security clearance to invest in land owned by his wife’s family, who are displaced to opposition areas. The farmer and his wife applied to register in the first-degree relatives’ auctions in Hama. However, the lack of security clearance prevented his wife’s name from appearing in the list of relatives that the Hama Governorate publishes periodically.