Morocco outlines anti-urban poverty strategy
Morocco, Politics, 10/17/2001

Morocco outlined Tuesday before the fourth international forum on urban poverty, opened Tuesday in Marrakesh, its strategy meant to reduce poverty in urban and pre-urban areas.

In a report to the forum, Moroccan town planning, environment, urbanism and housing minister, Mohamed El Yazghi, said poverty in Morocco worsened over the few past years, despite efforts that helped, however, improve some social indicators.

The report imputes the worsening of poverty to the instability of investment flows, fluctuation of exchange rates, increase in dollar value and soaring of energy prices.

The burden of external debt that weighs on the State budget, the consequences of external trade liberalization, weak growth rates not exceeding 2.3 percent over the past decade also contributed to the worsening of poverty, the report adds.

Aware that only a genuine economic take off will reverse the trend, Morocco implemented a package of measures meant to reinforce the economy and help it adapt to changes, the report says, adding these measures relate to the financial policy, external trade, competition, investments, small and medium firms promotion and micro-loans.

Based on its conviction that the struggle against poverty will not be effective without a political environment governed by democracy and freedom and based on the rule of law and the protection of human rights, Morocco intends to implement a series of legislative measures part of the anti-poverty drive, the report notes.

These measures seek to curb the budget deficit and keep it below 3 percent of the GDP, ensure conditions for integration in the world economy in parallel to the implementation of the association accord with the European Union, activate the privatization process and improve public enterprises efficiency, the document says.

The measures also target backing financial markets, improving internal debt management, restructuring the private sector and spurring investments, it adds.

Part of the same drives, the government is determined to generalize new information technologies, enlarge the necessary infrastructures and encourage the liberalization of the sector for competition, the report says, underlining that this policy helped expand phone and internet services: nearly 3 million subscribers to mobile phones in 2000 against 29,511 in 1995, more than 1,425,000 subscribers to fixed phones against 400,000 in 1990. The number of internet users also increased to 200,000 in 2000.

Social protection, medical coverage, job generation, social development, education reform, struggle against illiteracy and promotion of low-cost housing were placed on top of the priorities of this anti-poverty policy, the report says.

All efforts are being made to ensure the success of the anti-poverty strategy, the report says, citing, in this connection, the allocation of 48 percent of the State budget to social sectors.

Regarding medical coverage, the report considers that the projects of compulsory health insurance for private sector employees and of the medical coverage for people with limited income are likely to help an adequate medical coverage for 35 percent of Morocco's population. The rate does not exceed 15 percent currently.

In matters of struggle against unhealthy housing, the report recalls that a budget of 1.55 billion Dirhams (US$ 140.90 million) was earmarked part of the State budget and by the Hassan II Economic and Social Development Fund in addition to foreign loans worth 830 million Dirhams ($75.45 million) Such moves helped launch a program to eradicate unhealthy housing, the report says.

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