'Rapid Return' of Growth Expected in Morocco - Jeune Afrique Magazine

Morocco can look forward to 2021 with “serenity” and rely on a “rapid return” to growth, with a rate of 4.9% this year, and a reduction of the budget deficit from 7.5% to 6.5%, wrote Monday French magazine Jeune Afrique.

This recovery will be backed by the new development model in the making, and the various far-reaching reforms that will follow, the Paris-based monthly publication stressed in an article entitled “Morocco: The Return of the Protective State …”

If the coronavirus pandemic has shaken the agendas, even within the royal commission tasked with producing a new social and economic pact for the next fifteen years, Moroccans “were surprised to witness the reappearance of a protective, agile and efficient state,” which has swiftly managed the repercussions of the health crisis.

“As soon as the first cases of Covid-19 appeared, a general containment was decreed”, recalled Jeune Afrique. To counter the loss of income of a large majority of families, the Kingdom implemented the “largest cash transfer operation in its history by distributing monthly income to five million families living in the informal sector and to more than 1 million wage earners who found themselves temporarily unemployed,” the publication added.

This operation was financed by the Special Fund for the management of the Covid-19 pandemic launched on royal appeal and which has mobilized more than 30 billion dirhams (about 2.7 billion euros).

Health wise, Morocco has also been “very responsive,” in the sense that during the controversy over chloroquine, the Kingdom decided, late March, to requisition all stocks of this molecule produced on its territory to treat Covid-19.

Faced with the global shortage of medical equipment, the Kingdom has adapted in “record time” its industrial tool to manufacture masks, hydroalcoholic gel, artificial respirators … It now exports to several countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and France, according to the same source.

“If this crisis has revealed weaknesses, it has also raised many hopes.” For the publication, “Choosing health does not mean sacrificing the economy, which was put to the test by the first containment, with daily losses of around 1 billion dirhams.”

“To cope with the second wave of the pandemic, the Kingdom has chosen not to re-confine and has bet on vaccination”, it added, stressing that Morocco is one of the first countries, alongside China, Russia and the Emirates that decided to vaccinate Moroccans over 18 years old.

“A massive operation should start at the beginning of this year,” Jeune Afrique concluded.