Morocco’s economy, Dame Covid obliges, has suffered a sharp slowdown. And as if to add to this unfortunate event, the sky got involved too. Indeed, the Kingdom is experiencing, this year, one of the worst droughts of the last 40 years. Another challenge to point out and not the least, that of energy, exasperated by the conflict in Ukraine. Its effects, combined with those of the pandemic and the drought, caused Morocco to lose two and a half years of growth.
Consequences, the Kingdom must face a new era, very tumultuous and which would have been uncertain without the solidity of its banking and financial systems and other establishments of the financial world. In any case, this is what Moroccan economic specialists interviewed by RFI indicated during the third edition of the Choiseul economic forum organized by the Institute of the same name in partnership with the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM) and the Casablanca-Settat Region which took place in Casablanca last month.
Mehdi Tazi, Vice-president of the CGEM and Brahim Laroui General manager of Mister Cristal had indicated on occasion that the solidity of its systems was one of the strong points of the country, because it made it possible to limit many damages to its economic activity. The latter suffering the brunt of the rise in world prices and other economic disturbances such as the dollar/euro parity…, key sectors such as those, industrial, agricultural or touristic, which represent a large part of the percentage of the country’s GDP, have not not been spared.
Also, by all its means the Kingdom tries to remedy the devastating effects, let’s say, on this economic activity in many structuring sectors. After a sustained recovery therefore, in 2021, the growth rate for this year will be around 1.3% against nearly 8% last year, underlined the World Bank.
And there, it is worth remembering that Morocco is no exception to the global situation, it faces the same level of inflation as that of Europe as indicated by the CEO of Lesieur Christal. Also, in order to denote the Kingdom’s desire to immerse itself in this subject, or even to catch up, the State intervenes at the end of the field to support and accompany the citizens and the national economy. Moroccan companies despite the tumultuous passage have shown themselves to be resilient and more solid than one could imagine.
These findings are in line with those of an economic report on Morocco (2021/2022) published last August by the Swiss Embassy in Rabat, indicating that ” the Moroccan economy has resumed the path of growth after the health crisis. Industrial activities have resumed their usual pace and the majority of jobs lost during the health crisis have been recovered“.
And the document to add that “In industrial terms, Morocco has gone in 20 years from a country with +low cost+ production to a +best cost+ country, with the ambition of positioning itself worldwide as a country offering the +best value+”.
The study further states that “ foreign direct investments recorded a positive trend and a substantial diversification of their origin. International institutions and regional economic partners continue to support the Kingdom’s development initiatives.”.
The Report also praises the stability of the Moroccan economy confirmed by international rating institutions and the reforms initiated in 2021 and recommended by the NMD, the aim being to have clean, sufficient, stable and sustainable financial resources, necessary to these last.
He invites Swiss economic actors to further explore the opportunities offered by Morocco, because through the latter, those presented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (ZLECA) are important. Several structuring projects will be launched there in the water, transport and energy sectors.
These are so many objectives to be aggregated in Morocco’s prospects for 2025. They will serve in their dynamics to better identify the challenges and issues for better acuity during these years to come in the effort of the construction of an economic strategy.