BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- 
During the past three months, hundreds of Syrian factories, plants, and workshops have been closed in several governorates as a result of many factors that accompanied the departure of the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Sputnik Arabic reported.
Industrialist Ahmed Anqa revealed that nearly 420 factories, plants, and workshops have been closed in the governorates of Aleppo, Damascus, and its countryside, Latakia, Tartous, and Homs.
In December, militants from the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took power in Damascus.
Anqa cites the lack of security in the Syrian regions as a cause for the closures, noting that unknown gunmen have looted factories in the industrial cities of Sheikh Najjar in Aleppo, Hasiya in Homs, and Adra in the Damascus countryside.
Anqa added that the poor electricity supply has also contributed to the closures.
The new rulers in Damascus have reduced the number of hours of electricity available for industrial cities. At the same time, the price of diesel for powering generators has increased by 30 percent since the fall of Assad’s government.
As a result, production costs for Syrian industrialists have skyrocketed.
At the same time, Syria has seen an influx of cheap products from abroad, most notably from neighboring Turkiye, which undercut local Syrian producers.
Anqa says foreign firms export these foreign goods to Syria illegally and do not pay customs fees, while the goods are of poor quality. Foreign firms also take advantage of the difference between the official and black market exchange rate between Syrian pounds and U.S. dollars.
Anqa says that foreign products are priced based on the black-market dollar rate, which is less than the official exchange rate of the Central Bank, in which Syrian products are priced.