The Green Morocco Plan's strategy concerns a sector which contributes 19% of the GNP, with 15% from agriculture and 4% from agro-industry. This sector employs more than 4 million rural inhabitants, and has created approximately 100,000 jobs in the agro-industry sector.
This sector plays a substantial role in the macroeconomic balance of the country. It also plays an important social role as 80% of the 14 million rural inhabitants depend on revenues from the agricultural sector.
Also, it is important to remember that the sector is directly responsible for the food security of 30 million consumers. This reaffirms the critical role that agriculture plays in the economical and social stability of our country.
The national agricultural strategy must deal with several limitations, the most significant being:
Insufficient investments:
Investments in the agricultural sector are characterized by:
- Insufficient use of production factors. For example, 4 times less fertilizer use per hectare compared to France, and 11 times less mechanization compared to Spain.
- Inadequate participation of the banking system in terms of financing agricultural projects with only 18% of agriculturists benefiting from the allocation of loans.
- Poorly developed agro-industrial infrastructure, which represents only 24% of the number of national industries, and that transforms only a third of the production.
- A poorly subsidized agricultural sector: subsidies allocated to Moroccan agriculture attain only 8%, compared to other countries where subsidies attain 30 to 70%.
Morocco benefits from only 60% and 28% of the tariff quota for fresh and processed products respectively.
Insufficient organization:
The agricultural sector is very poorly organized and there is a near-absence of inter-professional interaction.