Another day, another price hike

Yesterday, my husband lifted his head after a long spell staring at his phone and suddenly asked me: “Is there a new social media trend today?”

I answered, surprised: “Yes, why are you asking?”

He said: “They’ve raised fuel prices”.

Only a few hours earlier, the “trend” had been the health minister standing outside one of his ministry’s directorates, scolding employees for arriving late to work. The whole scene looked like a belated attempt to imitate Ayman Zeidan in the classic TV comedy Diary of a Director General, complete with supposedly “spontaneous” filming designed to make the minister appear close to ordinary people.

But Syrians on Facebook were not fooled. The performance was quickly pushed aside, and people began talking about the real event: fuel prices had been raised by nearly 28 per cent.

The decision was sudden, and the increase — in the opinion of many — excessive. The Syrian Petroleum Company came under such widespread criticism that it was forced to delete the post announcing the price hike. It did not, of course, reverse the decision.

By the next day, petrol stations had already changed the prices on their electronic boards with remarkable speed, proudly announcing their immediate obedience.

As for me, like everyone else, I waited to see what would happen in the market. The vegetable seller had not moved from his place. The grocer had not even wiped the dust off his goods. But prices had – almost magically - already risen, as if the entire city ran on petrol engines. The increase in consumer goods -  from tomatoes to yoghurt - almost mirrored the fuel hike itself, all without any consumer-protection oversight.

The Petroleum Company did not clearly explain the reasons for the sudden increase. Nor was it transparent in how it handled the decision, especially amid repeated talk about the “return of our oil” after the SDF folded in late-January.

Meanwhile, the Syrian street seemed more tense than at any time before. It has become routine that every attempt to narrow the gap between wages and the cost of living is quickly undone by decisions no one had expected. What is more dangerous than the price rise itself is that people no longer have the luxury of being shocked.

Everyone received the decision as if it were just another ordinary piece of news, especially after the rise in electricity prices and the mad bills that citizens can no longer afford to pay. One shock barely passed before another wave of inflation arrived. People met it with a little anger, a little sarcasm, and then a quick return to calculating what would once again be removed from the household budget.

For a state constantly speaking of projects that will take years to bear fruit, hope has become a tool for absorbing public anger. But daily reality weighs more heavily than promises postponed to some distant future.

My friend, a primary-school teacher and mother of three, sits calculating her salary after the promised “increase” that has still not arrived. She begins the impossible arithmetic: electricity bill, rent, then the rise in fuel prices, arriving to crush what remains of what she calls her “survival salary”.

People’s anger was reflected in a survey conducted by this magazine, in which many respondents from different social groups expressed their loss of confidence in the government’s ability to control prices or overcome the cost-of-living crisis.

Perhaps the widening gap between what is said and what is lived, together with the lack of clarity in economic policy, has left people in a state of “silent boiling.” At times, it surfaces in demonstrations under the slogan “We want to live” — a way to release pressure and make their voices heard.

In the meantime, economic decisions appear to be moving in another direction. As usual, the burden falls not on those who make the decisions, but on the citizen who must somehow survive them.