The average payment period for all public procurement amounts to 18.6 days in 2021 for the State and local authorities compared to 21.1 days in 2018, reports Today Morocco in its issue of October 18. The daily adds that for public establishments and enterprises (EEP), this deadline is 36.1 days during 2021 once morest 55.9 days on the same date in 2018.
According to the Observatory of payment terms, the main challenge for 2022 is to put in place dissuasive and coercive rules with a view to improving the payment behavior of companies. The daily indicates that the latest report from the observatory highlights two main lessons. “It thus highlights the maintenance of the positive trend observed since 2018 in terms of payment terms in the public sector, thanks to the efforts made by the State, local authorities and public establishments and companies. It also notes the deterioration of payment practices at the level of the private sector during the 2020 financial year, strongly marked by the economic repercussions of the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic”, notes the newspaper.
Overall, the report shows that payment terms for the State and local authorities have improved significantly over the past five years. It should be noted that at the level of public contracts, the deadlines have increased from 42 days in 2018 to 33.9 days in 2021, including 32.83 days for the State and 37.4 days for local authorities and that the amount of interest moratoria paid to state suppliers is down in 2021. Last year, 8.5 million dirhams were paid compared to 20.3 million dirhams in 2020 and 31.2 million dirhams in 2019.
“The trend towards improved payment terms for the State and local authorities observed over the past five years will be all the more noticeable over the next few years insofar as the TGR will continue, during the course of the year 2022, the process of end-to-end digitization of public spending”, indicates the daily.
Regarding the payment terms of public establishments and enterprises in 2021, the sample taken into account includes 191 EEP (163 public establishments and 28 limited companies) constituting 71% of EEP in the public portfolio. Nearly 87% of public establishments and 82% of public enterprises paid their suppliers without delay.
“After more than 3 years of its entry into service, the Ajal platform has 505 registered suppliers, of which 125 have filed 924 complaints relating to 119 EEP for an amount of approximately 709 million dirhams. 63% of the requests filed have been processed (616.82 million dirhams) and 37% are being processed (92.17 million dirhams). The SME is the most active on this platform with 770 complaints filed at the end of 2021 (83%) for a total amount of 430.94 million dirhams”, also underlines the report.
However, according to Bank Al-Maghrib, the analysis of the payment behavior of private sector companies in 2020 reveals a deterioration with average supplier payment terms of 123 days of purchases (JA) while, on the customer side, the average overall is 193 days of turnover (JCA). For example, for VSEs, customer lead times reached 279 days in 2020, compared to 195 days in 2018 and 127 days in 2013.
