The People's Assembly approves the new investment bill

Damascus-Sana

The People's Assembly, in its twenty-third session of the second ordinary session held under the chairmanship of Hammouda Sabbagh, Speaker of the Assembly, approved the new investment bill and became law.

Before approving the project, the council discussed requests for deliberation submitted by a number of council members about the entirety of the project’s articles. At the end of the discussion, a number of amendments were approved on some of the articles that had been approved in previous sessions.

Among the most prominent of the new amendments to the project approved by the Council is the amendment of Article 34 of it, whereby it states that “An independent arbitration center will occur at the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce called the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce Center for Arbitration and is concerned with looking into civil and commercial disputes arising from investment in the event that the two parties agree. "To resort to arbitration before him, and the Federation shall lay down the Center's internal system and the arbitration system before it, in accordance with the rules determined by the arbitration law in force, in a manner that does not contradict the provisions of this law."

The Board also agreed by majority to cancel Articles 35 and 36 related to the Independent Arbitration Center due to the provision of their content within Article 34, which the Council agreed to amend, while the phrase “issuance of investment license” contained in Article 17 was amended to become “Granting an investment license” and delete the phrase “at the foundation stage.” “Within Article 20, customs incentives must be granted to the investment project in all its phases and not only during the establishment phase.

Among the amendments approved by the majority was the amendment of Article 6, whereby new members were added to the Supreme Council for Investment, namely “President of the Federation of Trade Unions and President of the General Federation of Peasants,” and the membership of “Chairman of the Planning and International Cooperation Authority” was replaced by “Minister of Public Works and Housing.”

The amendments to the project also dealt with deleting the phrase related to “the Supreme Investment Council issuing executive instructions” from the text of Articles 21 and 22 due to the presence of their content in Article 51 which states that “Executive instructions for the provisions of this law shall be issued by a decision of the Supreme Investment Council.”

According to Article 52 of the project, legislative decrees No. 8 of 2007 and 9 of 2007 related to the Syrian Investment Authority were canceled, as well as Chapter Two of Legislative Decree No. 41 of 1972, which includes “Formation of the Supreme Council of the Square”, while some decisions of the Council continue to work and the Ministry of Tourism undertakes the organizational tasks entrusted to the Council Top for Tourism.

For his part, Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade, Dr. Muhammad Samer Al-Khalil, affirmed that the new investment bill, which has enjoyed a very important discussion over several sessions in the People's Assembly, is an “important, modern and attractive project for foreign and domestic investments,” especially as it included a large number of incentives, tax, financial, and others. Granted to investors to take advantage of the various investment opportunities in the current stage and the coming years.

The Minister Al-Khalil also clarified that all tourism projects licensed under the decisions of the Supreme Council for Tourism and the Ministry of Tourism continue to work on these decisions, according to which they were licensed, explaining that the tourism sector has benefited a lot from the advantages in the new draft law for investment and there is a great capacity to promote the tourism sector in an organized and consistent manner with Other investment sectors within the project.

At the conclusion of the session, the President of the Council stressed the importance of the discussions that took place over several sessions of the new investment bill, as well as the amendments that were made as a result of the deliberations on a number of the draft articles, including the addition of representatives of the Federation of Trade Unions and Peasants to the membership of the Supreme Council for Investment because workers and peasants are “the basis of the work force in Communities, ”noting the great importance of the new draft law for investment in“ promoting the development process and supporting the national economy. ”

The session, which was attended by Minister of Justice, Judge Ahmed Al-Sayed, and State for People's Assembly Affairs, Eng. Maloul Al-Hussein, rose to 11 pm tomorrow, Wednesday.

Wasim Al-Adawi