Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui is in the sights of the Moroccan media. The decision rendered by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance on the list of media authorized to publish legal announcements issued by listed companies has sparked a wide controversy in the press.
This is the decision n ° 3109.21 published in the Official Bulletin n ° 7048, and which includes a list of 23 media institutions (paper and web / French and Arabic) authorized to publish legal announcements issued by companies that invite the public to subscribe.
On this subject, Noureddine Miftah, president of the Moroccan Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FMEJ) and editor of the weekly “Al-Ayam”, indicated that the law stipulates that the administration determines the list of sites authorized to publish these announcements. But this department, he stresses, should be affiliated with the communication sector of the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, and not with the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
In this sense, Nourredine Miftah, who confided in MoroccoLatestNews on this case, called “to the adoption of standards which take into account equal opportunities and what is stipulated in the Press Code of 2016, which distinguishes between legal and structured newspapers ”. According to him, ” all legal newspapers are supposed to be able to publish such advertisements, especially since the decision was rendered by a public authority ”.
Defining the list and limiting it to 23 newspapers is selective, believes this editor, who denied having knowledge of the procedure for submitting applications to be able to take advantage of the publicity.
” We have never heard of this procedure, not only as newspapers, but also as representative organizations and self-regulatory bodies. Neither the Entrepreneurship Commission at the National Press Council is aware of it, nor the Moroccan Federation of Newspaper Publishers ”, he confided.
The list in question, continues our interlocutor, “ excluded most of the media scene, because it was published without consultation with stakeholders, which is not far from scandal “, he said.
The head of the FMEJ stressed that it is necessary to modify the law, which should stipulate that all newspapers with legal capacity, are entitled to publish these announcements.
Faced with the media’s grumbling “excluded “, a dialogue was opened on the issue with officials from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Communication and the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. The latter affirmed ” that they would address the matter as soon as possible. Otherwise, a reaction will be observed from the professionals ”, Noureddine Miftah tells us.
For his part, the director of a newspaper that appeared in the famous list said in a statement to MoroccoLatestNews, that the decision of the Minister of Economy and Finance is not linked to administrative or legal announcements, but rather to financial announcements for companies listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange.
The same source clarified that “ such announcements must be published in newspapers specializing in financial communication, since the Ministry of the Economy and Finance issues a list approved by the Moroccan Capital Market Authority ”, noting that ” this list must be limited so that there is no overrun ”.
Finally, our interlocutor underlined that the Ministry of the Economy and Finance received requests to add to the list which is updated, specifying that “ the income from these advertisements does not come from state funds, but from funds of companies, which are required by law to publish all their financial advertisements in newspapers“.
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