The International Monetary Fund, Bank Al -Maghrib, urged the Moroccan Central Bank to adopt a framework aimed at inflation, and also urged the government to expand the tax base more to continue its financial reforms and reduce the country’s debts.
Bank Al -Maghrib said that inflation decreased to 0.9% in 2024 from 6.1% in 2023 as a result of low prices of imported goods and increased stability in food markets, while the inflation rate is expected to be 2.4% this year.
“With inflation back to about 2%, Bank Al -Maghrib must continue its preparations to adopt a framework aimed at (reducing) inflation,” the International Monetary Fund said yesterday, Monday, at the end of a mission to Morocco.
Debt
The Fund also urged the Moroccan government to expand the tax base and reduce transfers for state -owned projects.
The fund added that the tax reforms in Morocco enabled the government to achieve higher returns than expected, which helped reduce the financial deficit to 4.1% of GDP this year.
The fund added that in line with the 2025 budget “the higher returns should be used than expected to accelerate the pace of debt reduction to levels closer to before the pandemic.”
Growth expectations
The IMF expected the growth of Morocco’s economy 3.9% this year compared to 3.2% in 2024 “with the return of the agricultural output to recovery after droughts in the last period and the non -agricultural sector continues to expand at a strong pace amid strong local demand.”
Last January, the Moroccan Ministry of Economy and Finance announced that the budget deficit amounted to 3.9% of GDP in 2024, a decrease from 4.4% in the previous year, and attributed this to the increase in tax revenues.
The ministry said, in a statement, that the deficit shrinkled to 64.4 billion dirhams (6.46 billion dollars) in 2024, a decrease from 75 billion dirhams in the previous year with government revenues growing by 15.2%.
For its part, the High Commissioner for Planning in Morocco (governmental institution) expected the country’s GDP growth in the country 2025, while the public budget project in Morocco for 2025 expected the country’s economy by 4.6%, with an enlarged 2%.
Unemployment
The Fund also recommended the government to move to address the unemployment problem by “focusing on the disposable workers from the agricultural sector due to a series of droughts.”
Official data stated that the unemployment rate in Morocco increased to 13.3% last year, compared to 13% in 2023, while the agricultural sector continues to lose jobs.
The planning delegate announced last December that the unemployment rate in the country has increased to 21.3% in the past ten years, based on the results of the statistics in 2024.
“Between 2014 and 2024, the unemployment rate moved from 16.2% to 21.3%.
He added that “the rate moved from 19.3% to 21.2% in the urban environment, and from 10.5 to 21.4% in the rural center.”
