Moroccan press blame PM Akhannouch for jobs “massacre”

Aziz Akhannouch, Morocco’s business tycoon Prime Minister estimated, by some accounts, to be the fifth richest man in Africa is struggling with the Moroccan economy, according to a recent study.

According to TelQuel magazine, Akhannouch and his government are actually “destroying” jobs at an alarming rate despite on paper the economy doing not too badly. In a recent edition of TelQuel the magazine launched a scornful attack on the prime minister – by Moroccan standards of self censorship and parroting the government line – citing how he promised Moroccans 200,000 new jobs each year when he came to power in 2021, but in reality has actually destroyed around the same with estimations of over 500,000 jobs lost due to poor governance, although it is unclear over how many years.

READ: Morocco: IMF and World Bank bail out Akhannouch government

Although not all of the factors cited by the report are linked to Akhannouch and his government – such as the central bank governor hiking interest rates which has a huge impact on the construction sector – a great many are, putting huge pressure on him to produce a silver bullet for an economy which appears to be a black hole for inward investment, with resentment growing among Moroccans themselves. The authors expect that the PM will dispute the report’s findings but it paints a very bleak future of an economy in free fall as Moroccans grapple with inflation on an unprecedented scale – particularly food – while more and more of their young men remain out of work. Ominously, it also sends an even more dire signal to foreign investors to stay away, given that even when the government itself pumps money onto the private sector it still disappears without trace and more job layoffs ensue.

What the TelQuel article failed to touch on though, along with the report on the job catastrophe, is the prickly subject of government corruption which neither Akhannouch nor state friendly media usually want to focus on, given that five journalists were imprisoned for writing about graft. A recent case of a Rabat commune paying the salaries of ghost workers could be one of a hundred examples how corruption is getting out of hand in Morocco with the private sector economy being the big loser.

TelQuel