In light of the hike in the U.S. dollar's exchange rate against the Syrian pound, public servants have lost 70 percent of their income, recent data shows, as all Syrians are eagerly awaiting operational intervention by the government and the Central Bank to put matters back on the right scale.

The dollar edged closer to one hundred Syrian pounds at the black market on Wednesday, sending thus all prices skyrocketing and increasing the hardship of the Syrians, who suffer from the negative repercussions of the 21-month-long crisis in all aspects of life.

With the escalation of armed confrontations between army troops and rebels in various hotspots in Syria, the rate exchange has kept up with the events and made the Syrian pound lose roughly 50 percent of its value.

The government has repeatedly intervened to correct matters and maintain the currency's value. Yet, more drastic and firm measures are required to end the market's manipulations.

Syrians have dramatically complained about the soaring prices as prices of all commodities have at least doubled and in some cases tripled.

"Every seller, even the grocer or vegetable vendor, has doubled his prices and once you ask him why, he would immediately say that the dollar is now trading at nearly a hundred pound," grimaced a housewife.

"We can no longer buy clothes ... we only buy necessities and it seems that even those would soon be unaffordable for us," she added.

Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi, during a cabinet meeting earlier on Wednesday, has pledged that the people's suffering is about to end gradually in the next few days.

He indicated that measures have been taken to rehabilitate public facilities and repair power outages damaged during clashes between the two sides in different parts of the country.

According to the Central Bank of Syria's weekly report, the CBS has continued steps to support the exchange rate of the Syrian pound as it started last September in a way that reflects the changes in the local supply and demand of foreign currency.

The bank is still intervening through the Syrian Commercial Bank to meet non-commercial objects in terms of selling citizens 5, 000 euros monthly in the framework of meeting the demand for foreign currency.

The bank also issued recently a decision allowing licensed banks to sell foreign currency to importers according to the rate set by the bank.

The decision was taken for interventional purposes to enable importers to pay in advance for the goods to be imported. Endi

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