Jordan to completely reopen principal crossing with Syria this week By Reuters

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Jordan will absolutely reopen its principal border crossing with Syria from Wednesday, authorities and business officers stated, as a high-level Syrian crew arrived in Amman to debate the right way to ease the circulate of products hit by the pandemic and a decade of battle.

Though the Jaber crossing has been open since 2018 after the Syrian authorities drove rebels from southern Syria, commerce has but to get well to the $1 billion pre-war degree.

The pandemic led to measures to attempt to curb transmission of the coronavirus and people restrictions can be lifted from Wednesday, officers advised Reuters.

They stated a visiting commerce delegation from Syria, led by economic system, commerce, agriculture, water and electrical energy ministers, would additionally focus on lifting tariff boundaries.

“We hope the strikes will restore earlier commerce dealings earlier than the battle and revive profitable transit commerce,” Jamal al Rifae, deputy head of Jordan’s chamber of commerce, advised Reuters.

Inside Minister Mazen Faraya stated restrictions on Syrian transit cargo to Gulf markets and Iraq via Jordan may even be lifted, which Damascus has been pushing for.

Transit cargo from the Gulf may even be allowed from Jordan to Syria together with unrestricted passenger visitors, Faraya advised Jordan’s Al-Mamlaka public broadcaster.

Earlier than the battle in Syria, the Nasib-Jaber crossing was a transit route for lots of of vehicles a day transporting items between Europe and Turkey and the Gulf.

Jordanian businessmen had largely shunned coping with Syria after the 2019 Caesar Act – the hardest U.S. sanctions but that prohibited international corporations buying and selling with Damascus.

Hit by financial slowdown prompted partially by the pandemic, Jordanian businessmen have lobbied the federal government to ask Washington to ease restrictions on objects it wants approval to import from Syria, the place merchants have lengthy had shut partnerships.

Syria’s solely usually working frontier crossing has been with Lebanon, and lately Iraq after the reopening of the Qaim crossing in 2019.