Syria appoints Maysaa Sabrine as first woman to head central bank

People and cars are seen in front of the Central Bank of Syria, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria. (Photo/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Syria's interim government appointed Maysaa Sabrine, formerly a deputy governor of the Syrian central bank, to lead the institution as the first woman to do so in its more than 70-year history, a senior Syrian official has said.

Sabrine, a longtime central bank official mostly focused on oversight of the country's banking sector, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

She replaces Mohammed Issam Hazime who was appointed governor in 2021 by Bashar al Assad and remained on after Assad was ousted on December 8.

Since then, the bank has taken steps to liberalise an economy that was heavily controlled by the state, including cancelling the need for pre-approvals for imports and exports and tight controls on the use of foreign currency.

But Syria and the bank itself remain under strict US sanctions.

The bank has also taken stock of the country's assets after Assad's fall, Reuters reported.

The vault holds nearly 26 tonnes of gold, the same amount it had at the start of its civil war in 2011, sources told Reuters, but foreign currency reserves had dwindled from around $18 billion before the war to around $200 million, they said.

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Source: TRT