Crece en un 56,4% el déficit comercial de Marruecos
Last October came to an end with the news that Morocco's trade deficit grew by 56.4% compared to the same period of the previous year, as reported by the Foreign Exchange Office of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Kingdom of Morocco in a report published on its official website. The figure - which refers to the negative difference between what a country sells abroad, and what it buys from other countries - amounted, at the end of the tenth month of 2022, to 260.84 billion Moroccan dirhams.
On the one hand, total exports have experienced a growth of 36.4% compared to 2021: while then these were around 259.599 billion dirhams, in January this year they have reached 354.095 billion dirhams. The sectors that have benefited most from this export growth are the phosphates and phosphate derivatives market, the automotive sector, and the agricultural and agri-food sector.
The first of these, phosphates and their derivatives, a market in which the Kingdom has become one of the world's leading suppliers, used for the manufacture of both natural and chemical fertilisers, is the sector with the highest growth in exports. October 2022 closes the accounts with a profit of more than 100 billion dirhams, compared to 61.4 billion dirhams the previous year. A 63% increase.
Meanwhile, other sectors such as the automotive, aeronautics and electronics have also witnessed one of their best years in recent times. The automotive sector had not reported an increase of 36.7% or more over the previous year for more than half a decade.
However, export revenues, however much they have increased, have not been able to compensate for the increase in demand and the growth of domestic imports. Thus, with a relative increase in imports of 44.2 per cent compared to October 2021, the Kingdom has spent more than 188.6 billion Moroccan dirhams more on the purchase of foreign goods, products and services than last year. Compared to the 426.318 billion dirhams spent on import trade in 2021, Morocco has reported spending more than 614.9 billion dirhams this year.
According to the note published by the Bureau de Change, energy products and supplies have been mainly responsible for this increase in demand, as they have registered a spike of almost 50% in spending. It has doubled. From the Dh59.323 billion earmarked in October 2021 for this item, Rabat is allocating more than an additional Dh128 billion this year. This is justified by growing energy insecurity and the looming threat of a global energy crisis due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical redistribution of energy supplies around the world.
Similarly, manufactured, semi-manufactured and crude oil products have seen an increase of close to, and in many cases more than, 50%. This is the case with products such as ammonia, chemical products, soya oil and copper derivatives.
For its part, foreign direct investment (FDI) has exceeded 21,850 million Moroccan dirhams during the first ten months of this year 2022, more than 50% over the same dates of the previous year. However, according to the Foreign Exchange Office, FDI inflows increased by only 33 per cent to 324.8 billion dirhams, while FDI expenditure rose by 7.3 per cent to 106.2 billion dirhams.
