Syria’s recovery requires urgent but prudent investment choices. The article, the third in a series on the subject,  underscores that every allocation of public resources—whether through land transfers, subsidies, or tax breaks—carries an opportunity cost. What is granted to one project inevitably bypasses another, making prioritization essential. Without rigorous appraisal mechanisms, scarce resources risk being locked into ventures with minimal social return, particularly luxury real estate or speculative projects, while sectors vital to livelihoods—such as agro-industry, renewable energy, and labor-intensive industries—remain underfunded.

Time is a decisive factor. Post-conflict “windfall windows” generate early opportunities, but benefits diminish over time. Projects that promise delayed payoffs but require immediate fiscal concession  or risk inducing inflation in the immediate future weaken stabilization efforts and heighten social fragility. Discounting, whether through classical economic models or Islamic finance mechanisms, provides a structured way to compare projects on equal footing by factoring both time and risk. This is not about fixing interest rates, but about due diligence—ensuring scarce resources serve the highest public value and mitigate uncertainty.

The paper critiques Syria’s recent legislative package (Decrees 112–115/2025) for prioritizing capital attraction through sweeping incentives and opaque asset transfers, while omitting mandatory feasibility tests and governance safeguards. This creates vulnerabilities for elite capture and fiscal imbalance. Without transparent valuation benchmarks and performance-based conditions, public assets risk being diverted to projects that erode state revenues and deepen inequality.

Drawing lessons from the Marshall Plan and Malaysia’s Sukuk model, the paper highlights three imperatives: transparent prioritization of sectors with strong economic and job multipliers, embedding risk-sharing mechanisms into the recovery planning, and ensuring inclusivity to distribute the returns on investments as widely as possible. Both cases demonstrate that effective recovery depends not only on the volume of capital mobilized, but on how it is allocated, regulated, and distributed. For Syria, developing a hybrid appraisal framework that integrates global best practices with locally rooted norms can transform capital inflows into public value, anchoring recovery in efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy.