Washington, June 25, 2025 – The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved yesterday a US$146 million grant financing to Syria from the International Development Association (IDA) to help restore reliable, affordable electricity and support the country’s economic recovery. The Syria Electricity Emergency Project (SEEP) will rehabilitate damaged transmission lines and transformer substations and provide technical assistance to support the development of the electricity sector and build the capacity of its institutions.
Years of conflict have crippled Syria’s national grid, limiting electricity supply to 2–4 hours daily and undermining critical sectors like water, healthcare, agri-food, and housing. The electricity sector has long struggled to meet demand, especially over the past five years, leaving large segments of the population and economy in a persistent state of energy insecurity. Syria’s electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure suffers from high losses and needs urgent restoration and modernization. In many areas, key substations have been either destroyed or left in disrepair, contributing to high technical losses. The lack of maintenance, spare parts, and investment has compounded the deterioration, rendering much of the backbone grid unreliable and vulnerable to frequent outages.
"Among Syria’s urgent reconstruction needs, rehabilitating the electricity sector has emerged as a critical, no-regret investment that can improve the living conditions of the Syrian people, support the return of refugees and the internally displaced, enable resumption of other services such as water services and healthcare for the population and help kickstart economic recovery," said Jean-Christophe Carret, World Bank Middle East Division Director. "This project represents the first step in a planned increase in World Bank support to Syria on its path to recovery and development."
The SEEP will finance the rehabilitation of high voltage transmission lines, including two critical 400 kV high-voltage interconnector transmission lines damaged during the conflict, restoring Syria’s regional connectivity to Jordan and Türkiye. The project will also repair damaged high-voltage transformer substations near demand centers in the most impacted areas that host the highest number of returnee refugees and internally displaced people and provide necessary spare parts and maintenance equipment. In addition, the SEEP will provide technical assistance to inform the country’s key electricity sector strategies, policy and regulatory reforms, and investment plans for medium to long term sustainability. It will also provide capacity building support to the electricity sector institutions to implement these strategies and reforms.
"Electricity is a foundational investment for economic progress, service delivery and livelihoods," said H.E. Yisr Barnieh, Minister of Finance. "This is the first World Bank project in Syria in almost four decades. We hope it will lay the ground for a comprehensive and structured support program to help Syria on its path to recovery and long-term development."
The Project will be implemented by the Public Establishment for Transmission and Distribution of Electricity (PETDE). Activities under the project will complement reconstruction efforts in the electricity sector, including PETDE’s ongoing activities to rehabilitate distribution infrastructure and development partners’ support to provide fuel supply and rehabilitate electricity generation. An international consulting firm will be recruited to act as PETDE’s Owner Engineer to provide essential project management, engineering, site supervision, environmental, social, health and safety, and financial management support throughout project implementation – in line with the World Bank’s regulations and standards. The Bank will also hire a third-party monitoring agent to strengthen fiduciary and environmental and social monitoring oversight and will provide hands-on expanded implementation support to help strengthen project implementation capacity
