By Siham Ali
Moroccans complain that the draft Finance Act does not go far enough.
One point of contention is the number of public-sector jobs it aims to create – just 22,500.
As it stands, the bill presented to parliament on October 20th will not be able to tackle the challenge of unemployment or overcome the shortage of human resources in several public sectors, economist Jalal Bassit said.
He argues that since the Benkirane government took office, it has reduced recruitment to the public sector without considering the required numbers of doctors and nurses at hospitals and healthcare centres, teachers, engineers and so on.
In his view, the state should shoulder its responsibility in this area and boost youth employment.
But according to Employment Minister Abdeslam Seddiki, the government plans to adopt several measures in 2015.
These include the Moubadara scheme, which aims to find jobs for youths in civil society organisations.
The objective is also to improve the performance of initial, basic, technical, vocational and higher training systems, Seddiki said.
A bill was also drawn up to reduce the duration of internships and give trainees social security entitlements during their placements.
According to sociologist Nawal Chaouki, the government should give tax breaks to businesses to encourage them to hire young people.
These businesses must be monitored to ensure that the rights of young trainees are respected and to avoid irregularities, she told Magharebia.
Discussions about the draft budget are also focusing on the provisional growth rate of 4.4%. Experts say this will not achieve the desired level of economic development.
Another concern is the reduction of the subsidy budget to 23 billion dirhams, which could create social tensions, sociologist Zahra Malifi said.
Especially now that tax on several food items will rise in 2015, she added.
Many people claim that the government is reducing people’s spending power directly instead of taking the necessary funds from elsewhere.
Salima Charaf, a teacher, said that instead of overtaxing items such as pasta, rice and tea, the government should first tackle the informal sector in order to boost tax revenues and combat tax evasion, because several companies are not obeying the law in this respect.
For Karim Ouardani, a 21-year-old student, the government’s priority should be education.
“Although the budget allocated in the Finance Law is 55.3 billion dirhams for both education departments, this is not enough,” he commented.
“We need to consider not only the quantity of learners, but also the quality of the education that is provided so that we can avoid problems in terms of access to the job market,” he added.
