Syria Market Monitoring Exercise- August 2015

The CBR - TWG, together with REACH, selected basic commodities to monitor based on what is typically available, sold and used by an average Syrian household. Some of those items are components of a Survival Minimum Expenditure Basket (SMEB), built by the CBR - TWG, which outlines the minimum culturally-adjusted items for survival for a six person household for one month. To monitor price and stock fluctuations of those commodities, CBR partners and REACH selected major markets, all with similar features, in 13 sub-districts of Idleb and Aleppo governorates in northern Syria. In those markets, enumerators identified fuel and gas traders, food and non-food item retailers whose prices and stock levels they can monitor every month.

Field work was undertaken between 17-23 August 2015 and is carried out on a monthly basis by CBR - TWG partners and REACH. Collected prices and stock levels correspond to the timeframe in which they were collected and should be used with care. Prices and stock levels can indeed be extremely volatile in the Syrian conflict, and they are relevant only in the framework of the markets where information was collected.