Morocco among world’s 50 largest public sectors, World Bank report shows

Morocco is among the world’s 50 largest public sectors, according to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2025.

The report noted that these countries collectively employ about 361 million public-sector workers out of a global total of 373 million.

Titled “Standards for Development,” the report provides a comprehensive assessment of the global landscape of standards today and how they can be used to speed up economic development, offering a practical framework for countries at all stages of development.

Morocco was placed in the lower-middle-income group, alongside India, Egypt, Pakistan, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Myanmar.

Leading the global ranking are China, which falls in the upper-middle-income category, followed by India, then Russia and the United States, both classified as high-income economies.

At the bottom of the list were Angola, Tunisia, and the Dominican Republic.

The report warned that the rapid expansion of international standards, including food labeling and the specifications of 5G cellular networks, is reshaping the global economic order in ways that largely benefit wealthy countries and major multinationals, while leaving many developing nations on the sidelines.

It described standards as foundational economic infrastructure, as vital to prosperity as roads and ports, noting that the standardized shipping container boosted global trade more than all trade agreements of the past 60 years.

The report also pointed out that standards have increasingly become tools in trade disputes, with non-tariff measures such as pesticide limits and labeling requirements now affecting 90% of global trade, up from just 15% in the late 1990s.

It noted demand for standards has surged, with more than half of ISO’s 20,000 standards issued after 2000, and over 7,000 new standards were released by major bodies in 2024 alone.

Yet many developing countries are largely absent from standard-setting discussions because they lack the resources and expertise needed to be involved.