BERNAMA – Malaysia
RABAT, Dec 18 (BERNAMA-NNN-MAP) — The healthy policies laid down by the Moroccan government have helped the country achieve robust macro-economic results, says the former International Monetary Fund (IMF) country director, Jean-Francois Dauphin.
“The solidity of Morocco’s economic fundamentals and the healthy policies put in place have contributed to getting robust macro-economic results,” Dauphin told a press conference here Monday following a visit by IMF officials to the north African kingdom.
He noted that this performance also helped Morocco obtain an IMF precautionary liquidity line of credit of US$6.2 billion last June.
The international financial institution’s forecasts set Morocco’s economic growth for 2012 at 3.0 per cent. It also predicted that the budget deficit would edge down to 6.0 per cent “thanks to the adjustment in June of the subsided products”, and for inflation to remain at 1.3 per cent, while the jobless rate was expected to remain stable, Dauphin said.
He added that even if Morocco had considerably advanced in terms of reinforcing growth and reducing poverty in the past decade, the country had to put in more efforts in fighting unemployment, especially of the youth, and in improving the social indices such as those relating to the illiteracy rate, and for equal access to health services and education.
Dauphin described Morocco’s 2013 draft budget as appropriate, noting that the viability of the public finances hinged upon the implementation of key structural reforms which allowed the government to generate budgetary leeway to improve social protection and invest more in human capital and infrastructure.
The IMF official insisted, in this regard, on the need to reform the subsidy regime, dismissing the present regime as inefficient in supporting the needy in the population. He also suggested more flexibility in the exchange rate policy to enable Morocco to cushion itself more easily from external shocks.
— BERNAMA-NNN-MAP
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