Al-Badia Cement has announced that Tarek Ziad Al-Zaim had been selected to sit as Board member in replacement of Nizar Asaad who resigned in October.

Al-Ahliah Vegetable Oil has reported a 12.75 percent increase in its 2011 revenues to SYP 1.5 billion.

Al-Badia Cement generated revenues of SYP 4.0 billion and posted a loss of SYP 669 million in 2011, its first year of operations.

Adra Cement, a state-owned cement manufacturing company, said that it had begun output from its third production line.

Syria’s state-owned food manufacturing companies generated total sales of SYP 6.3 billion last year, according to local reports.

The suspension of production at National Sugar Company is due to a legal dispute, not the security situation in the country, minority shareholders of the company have said.

Imperial Tobacco and JTI, two of the largest global tobacco firms, have acknowledged that their operations had been impacted by the unrest in Syria and the sanctions imposed by the EU and US on Syrian individuals and companies.

Nagib Assaf, a founding shareholder in National Sugar Company, one of two private refiners in the country, has announced the suspension of operations in the company because of the unrest gripping the country, as a local court asked for a freeze of his assets.

The state-owned water bottling company, which has a monopoly over mineral water bottling in Syria, said it generated SYP 282 million in net profits in 2011.

The head of Syria’s cement manufacturing body said total output by Government-owned plants fell 10 percent last year, attributing the decline to competition from the private sector.

The destruction by fire of a large textile plant in Aleppo last month has encouraged manufacturers to seek to insure their plants, a practice still very limited across the country.

The Ministry of Economy has banned all imports of wooden furniture that contain less than 70 percent of beech wood in a bid to help local manufacturers.

Syria’s state-owned cement plants produced a total of 3.87 million tons in the first nine months of this year, according to the entity in charge of the sector.

Syria’s state-owned water bottling company has reported profits of SYP 254 million in the first three quarters of this year as it plans to capitalize on its monopoly status to expand capacity.

The Syrian Government has approved plans to build a 1 million ton urea phosphate plant in the east of the country, although once more financing constraints may delay the project.