The Print House and Official Gazette is the first governmental printing facility in the country. It was established /85/ years ago in order to achieve many essential aims, the most important of which are to print and prepare the official newspaper and its appendixes. The first issue was issued in February 17th 1919, with the name of (Al-Assemah / The Capital) the official newspaper of government.
The print house tasks are restricted to: 
1) Printing issuing and distributing the official newspaper and its appendixes; it was divided into two sections:

A) first Part: The following texts were published in it:
1. Laws and Legislative Decrees.
2. The valid regulations in Syrian Arab republic according to international agreements.
3. Organizational Decrees.
4. Cabinet formation/ resignation decrees and Ministers nomination/ resignation decrees.
5. Organizational Orders.
6. The Prime Ministry orders due to be published in the Gazette.
7. The bulletins, instructions and explaining letters which were referred to Ministry of finance to publish.
8. The resume of the general assembly of state council and its specialized committees’ opinions relating with explaining the legal rules.

B) second Part: it consists of 3 divisions:
a. all Decrees, resolutions and texts, which were not published in the last section, are published in it.
b. official and unofficial bulletins, advertisements and judicial sentences’ resume were published in it.
c. The memorandums of people council were published in it.
The appendix of industrial and commercial property rights is issued once a month according to the provisions of Article /67/ of Decree /82/ of 30/6/1947 and its amendments. The appendix contains: patents, identifying marks, all discharge records, canceling them and the rules passed with regard to them, international agreements, texts, contracts and researches relating to industrial and commercial property rights and copyrights.

The papers of this appendix are numbered with serial numbers from the beginning of the year till its end.

The Gazette administration
- The director of print house manages the official newspaper with its two sections and the property rights appendix under the supervision of Ministry of finance according to its bylaws.
- The administration’s accountant in the directorate of print house supervise on the advertisements, the appendix of industrial and commercial property rights and all relevant accounting works.

Prescriptions, presents and exchange
- The Minister of finance specifies, by his own resolution, the price of participation in each of two sections of official newspaper and the property rights appendix, and the price of the one issue.
-  The Minister of economy and trade specifies the publication fees in the industrial and commercial property rights appendix after the Minister of finance approval and by agreeing with him.
- The print house directorate and official newspaper is permitted, upon approval by the Minister of finance, to exchange the newspaper’s two sections or one of them with the official newspapers of Arab and Foreign states and the international bulletins which contain legal, organizational or administrative rules. This exchange stops if the one of those bodies abstained from sending its newspaper or bulletin or it stopped for any reason. 
- The directorate of print house and official newspaper is permitted, upon approval by the Minister of finance, to present one or more issues or full collection of the official newspaper’s two sections or one of them, also one or more of the appendix of property rights and patents to one of international organizations, popular organizations or cultural institutions which concern with public library, administrative or legal affairs in Syrian Arab republic.
- The two sections and appendixes of official newspaper are issued in the capital of Syrian Arab republic, by Arab language.
- The first section is issued at Wednesday and the second section at Thursday of each week, it’s permitted to issue other issues, as necessary.

2) Printing the financial stamps with its various kinds and categories, popular work stamps, trade unions stamps and the ordinary and memorial post stamps of various categories, colors and sizes.
3) Printing the papers having value and the alcoholic labels exiting cards of various categories.
4) Printing and binding the publications of Ministry of finance and its subsidiaries.
5) Providing the print and the necessary printing services for public sector within the available abilities.
6) Printing the pilgrims’ passports, marine passports and family-card for Palestinian.
7) Printing export & import licenses.
8) Printing the various collection receipts used by state departments and municipalities, expending orders, receiving orders and computer’s models.
9) The statistic abstract issuing from customs directorate, the customs tariffs tables, all customs publications of booklets of different bodies.
10) Property papers and real estate records and all papers relating with real estate property.
11) Printing the ration cards (coupons).
12) Printing the statistic publications and periodical bulletins.
13) Printing the issuances of Damascus International Fair lottery and its admission cards.
14) Printing the tax laws and legislations collection and the public budget of state.
15) Manufacturing the clichés and gravures and rubber stamps.
16) Printing fuel coupons.
The print house and official newspaper is deemed one of the print houses specialized in printing specific publications having financial value and protecting against counterfeiting and falsification.
Machinery forces
Most of machinery forces in the directorate are ancient and still working till now, except some of new machineries which were introduced periodically one by one, and they are well used. The technical abilities need to continuous development through best using of the old machineries and introducing new ones’. At its current position, the print house plays a serving role, regardless of the profits it gains.

Proposals to develop its performance
The print house currently are buying new printing machineries and new printing preparation apparatuses, making maintenance for the old machines, providing them with spare parts, increasing the salaries, compensations especially the nature-work compensation the labors are exposed to serious functional diseases, employing well-skilled labors professionally and technically under labor-contracts.

Human forces
The number of the print house and official newspaper labors, according to the quality of the work they perform and the number of the machines and their ancientness, is /300/ labor. It’s noticeable that the well-qualified labors technically are few; in addition to differ the well technical labor level from printing profession to another. Pensioning off some of technicians had weakened the technical expertise’s level in the print house.

The new print house and gazette project
The print house & official newspaper directorate implements the new project onto three real estates in Kafersoseh district in Damascus. The university engineering unites prepared a comprehensive study about integral project to construct developed print house covers the country’s needs. The implementing period was estimated at three years will end in November 30th 2004; the military housing establishment – branch /7/ - is implementing the project and the Public Company for Studies and Technical Consultants is supervising on the project’s implement.
The total cost of the project is estimated at:
 
- 288 million S.P for building.
- 960 million S.P as project’s costs.
-  The land area is 11,500 m2.
-  The building area is 19,000 m2.
- The project’s capacity is 8000 ton paper yearly.

Some very new printing techniques will be introduced to avoid counterfeiting and falsification. The future publication will not differ than the current one generally, but some modifications on the current publications will be introduced and developed.

Difficulties & Obstacles
They embody in: scattering, ancientness and numerous failures of the machines because the implementing body connection with several projects, appearing some differences between the signed contract and the conditions books, from other side, and the littleness of the technical and ordinary labors.
The work in the project is going on rather well. the coordination among supervising, implementing and following up bodies is continuing; all problems occurred are processed through the follow-up committee meeting by organizing appendixes to the contract or instituting specialized committees to solve the problems. It’s better for the follow-up committee to have the authorities to decide in the urgent issues.

 Finally:
The print house & official newspaper, with its current abilities and consumed machines, is proud that it still presents the production which quantitatively and qualitatively match other public sector print houses having modern technology; it is also proud that it’s the first school which has trained a great number of labors in the printing field, for the public and private print houses equally.