New Body Tasked with Managing State Properties

In early October, the Council of Ministers approved a legislative bill to establish a new body to protect, manage and optimally invest state properties to generate higher financial returns. This move is in response to the program to reform the organisation structures of state entities and to implement the decisions of the Committee for Organisation Structures at the Ministry of Administrative Development. The Ministry of Administrative Development launched in 2017 an administrative reform program for the organisational structures of state entities in the country, aiming to standardize work processes across all ministries.

No official media outlet has published the text of this legislative bill and the official Tishreen newspaper is the only one that has reported about it.

Before the proposal to establish the new body, state properties were managed by the Directorate of Property Affairs under the various governorate councils, and also through the Directorate of State Properties and Agrarian Reform affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform.

Of the 80,000 properties owned by the state, 60,000 are managed by the Ministry of Agriculture, and 18,000 by the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, while the remaining properties are distributed among various public entities, including the Ministry of Finance, which manages the properties that belong to the state. The total area of land owned by the state is about 18 million hectares, 33 percent of which is non-arable, according to land use classifications.

The new State Property Authority is linked to the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, as reported by Tishreen, and its director will have the authority to liquidate, disburse and contract expenses. It may establish branches in the governorates by decision of the minister and the authority’s board of directors.

The difference between the legislative bill (which established the Authority) and a draft law is not clear, but it seems that this legislative bill will later be presented to the Parliament for study, approval, and enactment into law, or it will be forwarded to the presidency for issuance by decree.

There are two types of state properties: properties of public benefit, which cannot be disposed of outside their utility role, and private properties not designated for public benefit, which the state owns as a legal entity, whether those properties are under its actual control or under the control of others. Private state properties are classified into 12 types, the most prominent being Amiri lands, properties listed in the Land Registry in the name of the state, properties listed in the records of the Directorate of State Properties, dissolved properties, and vacant available lands or dead lands.

The Ministry of Agriculture announced in 2022 its intention to lease some of the lands it manages, and received many applications, but nothing has happened yet. Encroachment and the seizing of state properties have increased in many areas due to the war. Until 2012, settlements were being made for encroachment on agricultural lands and cases of seizing properties of the Ministry of Agriculture, which were treated as rentals.

Among the central directorates in the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, according to the Syrian Government Electronic Portal, is the Directorate of State Properties and Agrarian Reform, which provides the following services: leasing, boundary licensing, usufruct certification, conversion of state lands from rainfed to irrigated or wooded and vice versa, expropriation and relinquishing, exchange, right of way cancellation, allocation, conversion of public properties to private state properties, sale, registration cancellation, and amicable partition. Each of these services has conditions, announcements, and methods for obtaining them.

There are no precise details about the state’s revenues from all its properties. However, for example, the total revenues from agricultural lands owned by the state and investments therein were SYP 19 billion for the year 2022 and SYP 22 billion for the year 2023, out of total budget tax and fee revenues amounting to SYP 3.133 trillion for 2022 and SYP 5.099 trillion for the year 2023, according to official figures.