Morocco parliament fails to complete Green Morocco Plan evaluation

A Moroccan parliamentary committee has failed to complete its evaluation of the Green Morocco Plan before the end of the current legislative term after it was unable to determine the programme’s overall cost, the committee’s chairman said.

Abderrazak Ahlouch, head of the House of Representatives’ thematic group evaluating the flagship agricultural strategy, said the committee had planned a final meeting with budget officials to establish the programme’s total financial cost, but the meeting was repeatedly postponed and never took place.

“The evaluation is largely complete, but we could not finalize it without determining the programme’s precise financial cost,” Ahlouch told Hespress.

He said the committee’s work would now be left to the next parliament following September’s legislative elections.

Ahlouch denied that the delay stemmed from a lack of cooperation by the government, saying the agriculture ministry had provided all requested documents, statistics and information throughout the inquiry.

Instead, he attributed the setback to repeated scheduling delays, the late launch of the committee’s work more than two years after its creation, and the limited time remaining before the end of the current legislature.

The committee also postponed meetings on Morocco’s red meat sector after the sector’s interprofessional federation suspended its activities following the imprisonment of its president. Another planned meeting with the agriculture ministry was delayed during the Eid al-Adha holiday.

According to Ahlouch, committee members carried out field visits in several regions, including Agadir and Casablanca, and met officials from the agriculture ministry, regional agricultural investment offices, professional federations, chambers of agriculture and the National Institute for Agricultural Research.

He said only a few additional months would have been needed to complete the assessment, but the ongoing election campaign has made it difficult to convene lawmakers before the legislature ends.

The Green Morocco Plan, launched in 2008, was overseen by current Head of government Aziz Akhannouch during his tenure as agriculture minister and remains one of Morocco’s largest agricultural development programmes.