How to Apply for a Tender in Syria: Procedure, Documents and Issuing Bodies

To bid on a Syrian public tender: locate the published notice, buy the tender dossier from the issuing entity at the price stated in the notice, assemble the eligibility documents and the provisional guarantee, place your offer in the sealed envelopes the notice specifies, and register it at the entity's registry office before the end of the working day on the closing date.

What follows describes published procedure as set out in the governing law and in notices actually issued during 2026. It is not legal advice. In every case the binding reference is the conditions book (دفتر الشروط) for the specific tender and the authority that issued it.

The governing law and the six procurement methods

Public procurement by Syrian public entities is governed by Law No. 51 of 2004 on the system of contracts for public entities, issued 9 December 2004 and in force from 1 January 2005. No instrument repealing or replacing it was found in the sources consulted, and a World Bank document of January 2026 describes it as the law currently governing public procurement in Syria. There is no "Contracts Law No. 51 of 2024".

Article 2 lists six methods of meeting a public entity's needs: direct purchase, tender (مناقصة), request for proposals (طلب العروض), competition, contracting by mutual agreement, and execution of works in trust. The choice rests with the ordering officer (آمر الصرف). An auction (مزايدة) is not a procurement method: under Article 73 it belongs to the sale, lease or investment of public assets. The law does provide for a restricted tender, under a different name: Article 26 allows a tender to be declared «محصورة», confined to bidders meeting stated material and technical capability conditions, with the committee's determination of the admitted list being final.

Who issues tenders

Tenders are issued by the public entities themselves, alongside a central body created in 2026 for procurement above stated thresholds. Decree No. 63 of 2026, issued 15 March 2026, established the General Authority for Supply and Provision (الهيئة العامة للإمداد والتوريد), with legal personality and financial and administrative independence, attached to the General Secretariat of the Presidency and seated in Damascus. As reported by SANA from the decree text, requests above 5,000,000 new Syrian pounds (internal) and 10,000,000 new Syrian pounds (external), or the equivalent, are received by the Authority, which prepares the conditions books, announces, opens the offers, awards and signs. Below those thresholds entities appear to contract themselves: in 2026 Homs University, the Aleppo electricity company, municipalities in Idlib and Lattakia city council each ran their own tenders. No official website belonging to the Authority was found.

Internal versus external tenders: the decisive gate

For a foreign company the single most important word in a notice is whether the tender is internal (داخلية) or external (خارجية). Article 9(b) draws that distinction, and only external tenders are addressed to non-resident foreign bidders. Notice 042-م-2026, for example, is expressly headed as an internal tender. No data was found on how frequently tenders are designated external in current practice, so this should be checked notice by notice.

Where notices are published, and how much notice you get

Article 10(a) requires tender notices to be published in the Official Announcements Bulletin and in a daily newspaper, and posted on the entity's notice board; radio, television and other media may be used where appropriate, and copies of external-tender notices may be sent to Syrian commercial missions abroad and foreign missions in Syria. Article 9 sets the minimum advertising periods at 15 days before an internal tender and 50 days before an external one, reducible in urgent cases to not less than 5 and 25 days respectively, with the notice then carrying the words «السرعة الكلية». The day of the announcement and the day of the session are excluded, and the conditions books may not be amended after publication without re-advertisement.

In practice, 2026 notices appear in several places: SANA publishes the Authority's notices in full in its economy section, numbered in one running sequence with «م» for tenders and «ع» for price-quotation requests, reaching No. 053 by 20 July 2026; the electronic announcements bulletin on alhurriyah.sy (issue 240 of 26 April 2026 carried nine tenders, four public auctions and three requests for proposals from entities in Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Lattakia); the archive at elan.gov.sy, operated by المؤسسة العربية للإعلان, exposes roughly 87,622 entries indexed by official bulletin issue number; and individual entities such as the Public Establishment for Electricity Transmission and Distribution publish on their own sites. UN agency requirements appear on UNGM, filterable by beneficiary country, with UNDP running its own notices portal, and NGOs such as SEMA publishing directly.

Two cautions. English-language aggregators describe a Syrian procurement authority and an electronic bidding portal under names that appear in no official Syrian source consulted: not in Law 51 of 2004, not in Decree 63 of 2026, not in the published notices. And no central government portal for submitting bids electronically was found. Rebuilding Syria Platform consolidates notices in its published tender listings, organised by sector.

The dossier and its price

The tender dossier is bought, and Article 10(b) requires the notice to state both the seller and the price. The law fixes no tariff, so the price is set tender by tender. Prices published in 2026 include 500 new Syrian pounds (Homs University, supply of copying paper), 1,000, 5,000 and 15,000 new Syrian pounds on Authority notices, and USD 50 on several others, with dollar-denominated dossier fees sitting alongside pound-denominated guarantees in the same notice. Some notices allow the dossier to be paid for by Sham Cash transfer and delivered by email on request. The offer itself is still handed in on paper.

Eligibility and documents

Article 11 sets the participation conditions and is the legal basis for pre-award disqualification. Paragraph (a) contains six conditions, including that the bidder is not debarred or under attachment, commercial-register entry, membership of the relevant chamber, a judicial record free of felony conviction, and not being a public employee, plus a further declaration required by the same article. Conditions 2 and 3 apply on their own terms to «العارضين السوريين ومن في حكمهم»; conditions 4 and 5 concern natural persons; conditions 1, 5 and 6 are established by written declarations. Documents 2 to 5 may not be more than three months old, paragraph (هـ) permits waiver of conditions 2 and 3, and paragraph (ح) allows substitution by a certificate from a public entity holding the documents.

Critically for foreign bidders, Article 11(و) expressly exempts foreign companies with no branch or resident representative in Syria from producing documents 2, 3, 4 and 5. A Syrian commercial register entry is therefore not a precondition for submitting an offer in an external tender. Article 15 requires an elected domicile, which may be abroad for non-resident bidders where the conditions book so provides; Article 16 governs agent commission; and Article 72 allows external contracts to place taxes, fees and advertisement costs on the public entity.

Individual notices add their own conditions. In bulletin issue 15832 of 2026, a Lattakia Directorate of Technical Services notice required the bidder to be subscribed to the Official Announcements Bulletin for 2026 and classified with the contractors' syndicate at the same grade as the works; a Makhram al-Tahtani notice required the classification document to be attached; and a Shin notice made the bidder responsible for holding a classification matching the announced value.

Guarantees, and a currency point that changes the numbers

Article 46(a) sets the provisional guarantee at 5% of the estimated value and the final guarantee at 10% of the contract value, or a lump sum where there is no estimate. These are defaults: the ordering officer may reduce them where the conditions book and the notice say so, spare-parts supply and maintenance contracts are exempt, and exemption is possible in special cases with prior ministerial approval. Guarantees may be paid in cash into the entity's fund or bank account, or by bank guarantee, bank transfer or certified cheque from banks accredited and resident in Syria. Whether a guarantee issued or confirmed by a foreign bank is accepted was not established, and should be raised with the issuing authority.

Both forms appear in 2026. Homs University used «5% of the estimated value» against an estimate of 2,000,000. Authority notices used fixed sums: 743,000, 781,627, 836,666 and 880,625 new Syrian pounds, 1,443,000 per indivisible line item, 8,000,000 divided across items, and 19,000,000 on one notice. All amounts must be read as new pounds: Decree No. 293 of 2025, signed 24 December 2025, set 100 old pounds equal to 1 new pound, with old notes withdrawn from 1 January 2026.

Envelopes, submission and the opening session

The offer goes into a sealed, signed outer envelope addressed to the entity named in the notice and marked with the tender subject and date (Article 14). Inside, a tender uses two envelopes (documents and guarantees; financial offer), while a request for proposals uses three, adding a separate technical envelope in which no prices, reservations or legal or financial conditions may appear. The 2026 notices track the reference letter exactly: two envelopes on 042-م and 046-م, three on 043-ع, 047-ع, 049-ع, 050-ع, 052-ع and 053-ع.

Offers may be delivered directly or by registered mail but must be registered in the entity's registry office before the end of official working hours on the closing day. One offer per bidder, the earliest registration prevails, and no retrieval, completion or amendment is possible after registration. A common misconception is worth correcting: red wax sealing appears once in the law, at Article 22(a), and concerns the administration's own confidential maximum price, not bidders' envelopes.

For a tender the opening is a public session that bidders attend; for a request for proposals the examination is a secret session that bidders do not attend (Article 31). The committee has at least three members, is not chaired by the ordering officer, and its decisions announced in session are final. Bidders failing Article 11 are excluded and their offers returned unopened. Accepted offers are ranked from the lowest price after checking unit and total prices; where only one offer is received or accepted the tender is re-advertised, and the sole offer may be accepted only on the second round; a tie at the lowest price is broken by a fresh sealed-envelope round in the same session. Delivery period is an express comparison criterion under Article 17.

Evaluation, award and commencement

In a request for proposals the evaluation bases and the minimum acceptable technical mark must be fixed before the technical envelopes are received. Financial envelopes are opened only for offers that passed technically, and the award goes to the offer most suitable to the public entity's interest on the basis of technical grades, execution periods and prices, not automatically the cheapest. The Ministry of Transport applied that sequence in the procedure it set out on 14 July 2026 for seven internal and external tenders to rehabilitate the M45 international road on the Nasib–Damascus, Damascus–Homs and Homs–Aleppo axes with the Saraqib–Idlib branch, the Damascus–Palmyra route and the Palmyra–Deir ez-Zor corridor, assessing roads-sector experience, works executed over the past ten years, personnel, equipment and implementation techniques; guarantees issued by Arab or foreign banks acceptable to Syrian banks may be used. Notices of this type appear under roads and bridges.

Award minutes are ratified by the ordering officer, who may cancel the result for written reasons but may never alter it. The winner remains a "candidate contractor" until the commencement order is notified, and before that notification the entity may withdraw with no compensation. The contract is signed within the period in the conditions book and at most 30 days from notification, failing which the guarantee is forfeited and damages may be claimed. The final guarantee is lodged before signature within a maximum of 30 days, though 2026 notices set shorter windows of 10 and 15 days, so treat the statutory figure as a ceiling. An advance of up to 15% may be paid only after the commencement order and against a bank guarantee. Delay penalties run at not less than one per thousand of the total value per day, capped at 20%. Bid validity is set in the notice, renews automatically unless withdrawn within seven days, and may not exceed six months in total; periods observed in 2026 ranged from 15 days to a full six months, and some notices bind the successful candidate for longer than other bidders.

What else a foreign company should settle first

Market entry has two routes according to the 2026 investor handbook: incorporation under Legislative Decree No. 29 of 2011, or registration of a non-incorporated presence under Law No. 34 of 2008, with branch registration handled by the competent department of the Ministry of Economy and then recorded by the Commercial Registry. Foreign corporate documents must pass a three-step legalisation chain (authorities in the state of registration, the Syrian embassy there, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and be translated by a sworn Syrian translator. There is no apostille route: Syria does not appear among the 130 contracting parties listed in the HCCH status table updated 30 June 2026.

For works, classification enters. Decision No. 2828 of the Minister of Public Works and Housing, issued in 2021, divides contracting into six specialisations and contractors into seven categories, and Article 14(b) allows Arab and foreign companies or their branches operating under Law 34/2008 to be classified only if registered with the Construction Contractors Syndicate, and exclusively under Annex 3, which covers the Excellent, First and Second categories. Financial solvency is defined by reference to guarantees, facilities or balances at accredited Syrian banks, while Article 13 accepts experience gained outside Syria. Annex 3's amounts are stated in Syrian pounds as at 2021 and no official restatement after redenomination was found, so confirm current figures, and the decision's current applicability, with the Ministry. Pure supply falls outside classification altogether under Article 15. One documented unknown deserves emphasis: no published rules were found on how a foreign company or branch joins the Construction Contractors Syndicate, which Article 14(b) makes a precondition.

Financially, payments for contracting, works, services and supplies are subject to withholding at source under Law No. 60 of 2004, whose Article 1 covers contracts with or for the benefit of Syrian public, joint and cooperative sector entities and foreign companies, with remittance in the first fifteen days of the following month; later amendments to the rate schedule were not verified. The investor handbook describes opening a tax file and holding an account with a licensed Syrian bank as practical preconditions for operating, and identifies correspondent-banking access as the principal execution constraint; a banking guide published in 2026 likewise records that international connectivity remains limited and cross-border transactions may face extended processing. Bidders should also verify export-control and sanctions requirements in their own jurisdiction: the United States revoked its Syria sanctions programme by Executive Order 14312 of 30 June 2025, while export controls continue to apply. Local partners and suppliers can be identified through the platform's company directory.

Why bids are rejected

Article 18 sets out the grounds. Missing documents may be completed within a granted deadline, with three exceptions that cannot be cured: the provisional guarantee, the prices, and price-analysis schedules where required. Offers coupled with reservations are rejected. In practice the recurring causes are late registration at the registry office; a first envelope lacking the guarantee receipt, expressly a ground for rejection on notices 047-ع, 052-ع and 053-ع of 2026; failure to meet Article 11, which produces exclusion and return of the offer unopened; submitting more than one offer or attempting to amend after registration; prices appearing in the technical envelope; and failing the minimum technical mark. Separately, Article 58 allows a contractor to be debarred by reasoned ministerial decision for up to five years, with a ban covering all public entities requiring a decision of the Prime Minister and reconsideration possible after not less than one year. A specialist portal operated by Syria Report records that the all-entities power was centralised by Decision No. 11 of 2024 of 14 March 2024; the decision's own text could not be obtained.

What cannot be generalised

No single checklist fits every tender. The dossier price, the form of the provisional guarantee (percentage or lump sum), the bid-validity period, the window for lodging the final guarantee, whether classification or bulletin subscription is required, and the number of envelopes all vary from notice to notice, and all were observed at different values during 2026 alone. Monetary amounts written into the 2004 text are inherently dated, since Article 3(c) allows the direct-purchase ceiling to be changed by Council of Ministers decision. Obtain the conditions book for the specific tender and confirm figures and deadlines with the issuing authority before preparing an offer.

What is changing

A reform track is announced but not enacted. The World Bank's Stakeholder Engagement Plan for the Syria Public Financial Management Capacity Strengthening Project, in a draft appraisal version dated 19 January 2026, describes a new law to replace Law No. 51, a procurement regulatory body, and development of a single procurement portal. The World Bank approved a USD 20 million IDA grant for that project on 5 March 2026, covering budget preparation and execution, procurement, and financial reporting. On 21 July 2026 the General Authority for Supply and Provision received an EU delegation and a SIGMA expert mission to review and diagnose the government procurement and tendering system and discuss developing its legal and regulatory frameworks.

Frequently asked questions

How do I apply for a government tender in Syria?

Find the published notice and identify the issuing entity, buy the conditions book at the price stated in the notice, prepare the Article 11 documents and the provisional guarantee, place your offer in the envelopes the notice specifies inside a sealed and signed outer envelope, and register it at the entity's registry office before the end of the working day on the closing date. The conditions book governs the binding detail.

Where are Syrian tenders published?

Article 10 of Law 51 of 2004 requires publication in the Official Announcements Bulletin and a daily newspaper, plus posting on the entity's notice board. In practice during 2026, SANA carries the General Authority for Supply and Provision's notices, an electronic announcements bulletin appears on alhurriyah.sy, elan.gov.sy holds the announcements archive, and entities such as the electricity transmission establishment publish on their own websites.

How much are the bid bond and performance guarantee in Syria?

Article 46 sets the provisional guarantee at 5% of the estimated value and the final guarantee at 10% of the contract value, or a lump sum where there is no estimate. Both are reducible or waivable in cases the law specifies. Both forms appeared in 2026: a Homs University notice used the 5% form, while General Authority for Supply and Provision notices used fixed sums.

What documents are required to bid on a Syrian tender?

Article 11 lists them: commercial-register entry and chamber membership for Syrian bidders and those in their standing, a judicial record and non-employment in the public sector for natural persons, and written declarations for the remaining conditions. Certain documents may not be more than three months old. The special conditions book adds more, such as a classification document for works.

Can bids be submitted online in Syria?

No official electronic submission channel was found. The 2026 notices require a sealed paper envelope delivered to the entity's premises, and the law permits registered mail as the only alternative to direct delivery. What can be electronic is the dossier: some notices allow payment by Sham Cash and delivery of the conditions book by email on request.

Can a foreign company bid on Syrian government tenders?

The distinction in Article 9 between internal and external tenders is decisive, and non-resident foreign companies are addressed by external tenders. Article 11(و) exempts a foreign company with no branch or resident representative in Syria from producing the commercial register, chamber membership and two further documents. Executing works, however, requires classification, which is confined to entities registered with the Construction Contractors Syndicate.

How much does a Syrian tender dossier cost?

The law sets no uniform tariff; the notice states the seller and the price. Prices published in 2026 include 500 new Syrian pounds on a Homs University notice, 1,000, 5,000 and 15,000 new Syrian pounds on General Authority for Supply and Provision notices, and USD 50 on several other notices from the same Authority.

Why are bids rejected in Syrian tenders?

Article 18 sets out the grounds and allows a deadline to complete missing documents, except the provisional guarantee, the prices and price-analysis schedules where required. A recurring cause in 2026 notices is a first envelope lacking the guarantee receipt. Failing the Article 11 conditions leads to exclusion with the offer returned unopened, and offers coupled with reservations are rejected.

Notices issued by Syrian public entities and by international organisations are consolidated in the platform's published tender listings, organised by sector so a single field such as roads and bridges can be followed. The listing is a monitoring tool, not a substitute for the source: the binding dates, deadlines and conditions are those in the original notice and in the conditions book held by the issuing authority.