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The road map places Syria off the scale, in the same tier as Lebanon. It sits at the bottom of the world distribution on governance, GNI per capita is about USD 830, reserves cover less than a month of imports and the banking system cannot honour deposits. The paper then shows why the two cases differ. Lebanon has a working administration and a destroyed balance sheet. Syria is a destroyed state with a light balance sheet: no Eurobonds, no deposit gap, and external debt that is mostly military credit from Iran and Russia, which the transitional government has repudiated.
What Syria lacks is capacity rather than solvency. The paper records that US, UN and EU sanctions were largely lifted in 2025–26, with the State Sponsor of Terrorism listing as the last legal barrier. Revenue doubled from a very low base, led by customs. About USD 26 bn of Gulf and Turkish memoranda stand against a USD 216 bn reconstruction estimate, but most of that support is pledged rather than disbursed. The 2026 budget tripled spending, put 41% of it into defence, and financed a USD 1 bn first-half deficit from a central bank with almost no reserves.
The sequence therefore runs in the opposite order to Lebanon's: Syria must build institutions before it takes on liabilities. The realistic target for this decade is Category 3 proper, meaning a rated, IMF-programmed post-conflict borrower.
Key findings
- Year 1 priorities: a rebuilt statistical system, new central-bank and banking laws, AML/CFT legislation, a debt-recognition statement, an IMF Staff-Monitored Programme and the first sovereign sukuk.
- The external debt of about USD 22 bn, 98% in arrears, is to be split into recognised and repudiated claims, with Paris Club-type treatment for the recognised part and a target of under 40% of GDP.
- Revenue is to rise from about 11% to at least 15% of GDP through a single tariff, ASYCUDA at every crossing and a law transferring hydrocarbon revenue to the Treasury.
- Security integration under one payroll is meant to cut the defence share of spending from 41% toward 15% over five years.
- Reserves are to rise from about USD 0.2 bn to about USD 2 bn (two months of imports), using Gulf deposits, the NY Fed account and restored oil output toward the pre-war 380 kb/d.
Summary of the paper; the full analysis is in the PDF.