The Effects of Import Substitution industrialization
Economists will tell you that pursuing ISI provides short-term benefits, but as long-term policy it is untenable. However, Syria continues to pursue this policy today. As a result, not only is the Syrian economy in shambles, but water security is damaged from decades of destroying the water table by digging wells in an arid landscape. The agricultural industry may have hit a tipping point. An unusually bad drought has forced the migration of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, according to the Daily Star:
“The story is similar in other parts of Syria. The currents of the Orontes river were once so powerful that they helped shield Shaizar castle, founded by the Thessalonian cavalry of the army of Alexander the Great, from Crusader attacks.
The Khabour, a tributary of the Euphrates, which used to irrigate farms in Hasakah has dried up, and Damascus’s Barada river, glorified in Arab literature, is now a smelly stream.
The situation has become so bad that the government recently asked for international aid and provided cash assistance to farmers’ families to try to halt the internal migration.”
Additionally, ISI leads to rising inflationary rates. This is why countries like Brazil have engaged in a quasi-liberalization process. Bashar al-Assad has promised that Syria will liberalize its economy. However, his actions have not followed suit.
