2023-04-29 11:31:57
The 15th edition of the International Agricultural Show in Morocco, the implications of soaring fuel prices, pension reform and the evacuation of Moroccan nationals from Sudan, are the main topics covered by Moroccan dailies and weeklies.
+Al Massae+ reports that the city of Meknes will host the 15th edition of the International Agricultural Show in Morocco (SIAM) from May 2 to 7, following a three-year hiatus due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The organizers expect this edition to be exceptional, given the participation of more than 30 African ministers of agriculture and more than 70 countries, in addition to the participation of more than 500 cooperatives and national agricultural associations.
The objective of this edition is to promote SIAM and make it one of the largest international exhibitions in the agricultural field, declared to the newspaper, the Commissioner of SIAM, Jaouad Chami.
Tireless efforts deployed to search for the two Moroccan cyclists missing on the border between Burkina and Niger (Al Ittihad alichtiraki)
+Al Ittihad Al-Ichtiraki+ indicates that the Moroccan Embassy in Ouagadougou is coordinating with all the competent authorities regarding the case of the two Moroccan cyclists who have been missing for several days on the border between Burkina Faso and Niger.
According to a Moroccan diplomatic source, tireless efforts are being made by all the services of the Kingdom’s representation in close coordination with the competent Burkinabè authorities to search for the two cyclists presumed missing on the border between Burkina Faso and Niger. The goal is to determine their whereregardings or find out from reliable sources if they had left this West African country.
+TelQuel+, which dwells on the implications of the excessive rise in fuel prices, writes that the lasting diffusion of these increases to the remaining parts of the economy has been total, specifying that the overall and underlying inflation is is generalized to the entire merchant organization.
With hindsight, the selective method chosen by the government, which consisted of subsidizing public and private transport operators with the aim of limiting the spread of energy inflation to the entire economy, “was probably not the best indicated”, estimates the newspaper.
Pinned down for suspicions of an illicit agreement having made it possible to reap 38 billion dirhams of undue margins since 2015, the oil companies have never been jostled by the government, neither to cap their margins, nor to lower their prices, nor to elsewhere, like entire sectors that have benefited from the pandemic to accumulate exceptional profits, to pay a marginal tax on superprofits, he notes.
Despite a note from the Competition Council revealing the mechanisms by which hydrocarbon distributors protect their margins at the expense of their market share, “this sector has remained immune, under cover”, he laments.
Admittedly, the government has increased the corporate tax on companies with more than 100 million dirhams (including oil companies) in turnover to 37%, but at the same time it has lowered their contribution to dividends from 15 to 10%, he notes.
“No anti-inflation shield was put in place, there was no activation of article 4 of the law on prices and competition which would have allowed the prices of certain basic products to be fixed”, adds he.
Either way, the higher the prices at the pump, the more indirect tax revenue the state generated, he notes.
In the end, the State, in its budgetary dimension, emerges a winner from the inflationary episode: first by mechanically reducing the public debt, then by preserving its expenditure from any overflow, he points out, stressing that despite the crisis, inflation and the erosion of household purchasing power, the government manages to spend less than it collects in tax revenue.
+Finances News Hebdo+, which discusses pension reform in Morocco, underlines that seeing the tensions and social tensions that such a reform has caused in France, one suspects that it will not pass like a letter. at the post office in Morocco, explaining that already, deep fault lines exist between the government and the social partners.
The points of divergence mainly come from the desire of the Executive to push back the retirement age to 65, lower pensions and increase contribution rates, but the trade union centers say no and “vigorously” reject this reform as it is currently conceived, which would be “ once morest the interests of the workers”, notes the weekly.
At the level of the UMT, it is maintained that “there is still time to ensure a fairer pension reform”, which is why its secretary general, Miloudi Moukharik, proposes “the creation of a High Authority for pension systems, responsible for supporting this reform as well as possible, on which will sit representatives of the government, the social partners and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council”, notes the newspaper.
Obviously, the task promises to be complicated for the government, but “let us grant Akhannouch and his team one thing: they are reckless and have the political courage to want to finalize this reform, where all those who preceded him , preferred to slip it gently into the drawers”, especially since “this file is boiling hot”, and “can be a source of extreme social tensions”, he warns.
+ Maroc hebdo +, which looks back on the evacuation of Moroccan nationals from Sudan, where every day is a new bloody episode of a human tragedy with its procession of dead, Morocco reacted early in application of the high instructions of HM King Mohammed VI, explaining that the services of the Embassy of the Kingdom in Sudan organized a land caravan from the capital Khartoum to the city of Port Sudan.
Moroccan nationals had to leave their homes, sometimes abandoning their precious possessions and brave the dangers of bombs and bullets before reaching this assembly point set by the Moroccan embassy in Khartoum.
From there, Royal Air Maroc planes managed to safely evacuate 293 Moroccans out of a total of 400, mostly women and children, to Casablanca’s Mohammed V International Airport, the publication reports.
Despite all the horror they have experienced, the returnees harbor the hope of returning there soon, but for now the situation on the ground in this Arab-Muslim country remains unstable and unpredictable, he notes. , believing that the lack of visibility is fueled by the divergent interests of the regional border powers, but also by foreign greed for the immeasurable wealth of a country made poor by civil war.
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