Mark Twain once said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Was he right?

Data released late last month from the 2009 census shows there were an extra 670,000 mouths to feed in Syria in 2009, inching the population to just over 23,675,000 people.

That’s just a little lower than the birth rate of the previous year, when 682,926 new Syrian babies were born.

What does the future hold for them?
Despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary, it seems Syrians are feeling optimistic about their future - optimistic enough at least to keep having more babies.

The average Syrian salary now stands at 13,500 SP a month, an increase, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, of 6% on last year. Bearing in mind average salary balances the highest and lowest incomes, it must also be remembered that inflation, after peaking at 15.7% in 2008, has now dropped to just 2.9%.

Director of the Syrian Bureau of Statistics, Dr Shafek Arbach, said there is nothing in the new data to suggest a growing gap between the rich and the poor in wealth distribution in Syria.
That may be true but it certainly doesn’t seem that way.

I’ve lived in Syria for 14 months now and I have seen the poor grow in number. There are more homeless on the streets. There are more beggars. There is no doubt about it.

Taxi drivers are getting pushier and more desperate in their pleas for extra cash, “My child is sick/I lost my job/my wife died/I have cancer on my lung,” goes the now familiar refrain.

Knocks on the window from a grubby-faced child selling unwanted chewing gum and Kleenex are more and more common.

This month, for the first time since I have been here, I have started answering the door to vendors, who, no longer satisfied with simply calling out the names of their produce in the streets are becoming bolder in their attempt to sell their goods.

Take Ahmad* the taxi driver, who, aged in his 60s, earns around 10,000 SP a month to support seven children.

Now semi-retired, he says the increase in gasoline prices hurt the most. “Life is more difficult now, for sure.”

But despite all that hardship, Syrians show a resilient belief that things are improving. The numbers do not lie.

In this month’s issue of Forward Syria we spoke to families about the increased cost of energy on household expenditure. Responding to complaints about the price increases, economic advisor Bassel Kaghadou called for those suffering to have “patience.”

The move to a liberal market economy was never going to be easy and now, after ten years in the making, the real effects are starting to be felt.

Syrians are being asked to have faith that the government and economic decision makers are acting with their best interests at heart, in the name of a better, brighter and more prosperous future.

Now, living in the limbo land between the magical delineation of ‘before’ (worse) and ‘after’ (presumably better), that faith is being put to the test.

In a democratic parliamentary system, when the limits of faith are reached, the people vote with their feet. Every four years, in most democratic states, citizens have the chance to start from scratch and the result is, more often than not, that nothing gets done. Just look at Obama’s healthcare reform disaster that could see him lose the next presidential election. All the hope in the world couldn’t untie the counterproductive house system.

Here in Syria we have the privilege to invest in a long-term strategies without the harmful impediment from pesky opposition promising quick fix solutions and impeding long-term goals. That is, of course, if the powers that be get it right.

A census like the one just released offers a real opportunity to assess policy effectiveness (excluding foreign policy) and the chance for the recipients of those policies to have their say. The census also offers a measure of faith and optimism in the future of the country.

And it appears the people have spoken.

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• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?

• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?

• Assad appoints a 29-member Constitutional Committee, for a new constitution by next February
• Sam Dalla: Was the Chinese model that good?