2024-01-18 23:01:28
Overview with Hicham Bensaid Alaoui, CEO of Allianz Trade on the economic highlights as well as the results for the year 2023, but also the economic prospects for 2024. Indeed, according to the Expert, the results have not been a very bright summer and the prospects will hardly be bright! Explanations.
Challenge: What economic assessment do you make of this year 2023? In this sense, what economic events in Morocco and around the world have caught your attention? For what ?
Hicham Bensaid Alaoui: 2023 was objectively a difficult and trying year, with economic growth of around 3% – which remains insufficient to claim emergence -, and one of the worst droughts in our history, culminating in the tragedy of the Al Haouz earthquake. These elements, coupled with the external shocks that we are all familiar with, resulted in inflation of around 4% in 2023, certainly down compared to the historic levels of 2022 (around 7%), but still at lower levels. standards significantly higher than pre-Covid averages.
It is in this logic that according to the Allianz Trade business insolvency barometer, these increased by 6% in 2023 at the global level, where the trend had been towards decline or stagnation for 3 years (- 16% in 2020, -13% in 2021, 1% in 2022).
Challenge: Do you think that businesses have been well supported this year by the State? What types of support are needed for businesses in 2024?
H.B.A. : The State had to manage a certain number of structuring projects in 2023. Some, planned and announced in advance, like the desire to overhaul the education and health systems, mobilized substantial resources, materialized in particular by the loan of half a billion dollars granted last June by the World Bank in order to promote the reform of the health system, without avoiding the subject of education, whose reform projects are unfortunately very topical.
Other projects, such as the followingmath of the Al Haouz tragedy and its 11 billion dollars allocated to the reconstruction and redevelopment of the disaster areas, were added, mechanically reducing the available budgets. In such a context, Moroccan companies cannot boast of having benefited from exceptional tax incentives or notable subsidies (with the exception of certain sectors, such as transporters or market gardeners for example), even if direct aid to households have mechanically made it possible to rebalance their purchasing power, mechanically trickling down to businesses.
For 2024 and subsequent years, I think that the proactive policy of the Moroccan State, through a certain number of large-scale projects (water highways, high-speed rail lines, desalination stations, expressways , investments linked to the Football World Cup, etc.), seems poised to offer concrete opportunities to many Moroccan companies, which should thus increase their order books.
Challenge: What lessons should young bosses and Morocco learn from 2023?
H.B.A. : I think that if there was a lesson to be learned, it is that the Moroccan State is called upon to manage a certain number of structuring challenges, whether these are security issues, brilliantly mastered elsewhere, or those linked to the reconstruction of areas affected by the Al Haouz disaster, without forgetting the announced education and health reforms. Therefore, in my opinion, certain young bosses must seek to free themselves further from a certain Keynesian ideology, in order to take more control of their future. In essence, ‘help yourself, heaven will help you’.
Challenge: What regarding the prospects in 2024 for the Moroccan economy and the world?
H.B.A. : Not very bright! The World Bank thus anticipates a 3rd consecutive year of recession, with Morocco, with its 3.1% growth expected in 2024, slightly outperforming the world average. Let us hope that the projects mentioned above will mark the beginnings of a new economic dynamic, in what is certainly a very delicate situation.
His journey
Hicham Bensaid Alaoui is the CEO of Allianz trade Morocco (By Euler Hermes Acmar), world leader in credit insurance. The Expert has to his credit an accounting diploma from the French State and a Master’s degree from Audencia Nantes School of Management. Before occupying his current position, Hicham Bensaid Alaoui held the position of Director of Information Risks, Information Claims and Recovery.
His News
Growth has never been so debated. The economy has experienced major events which have had a strong impact on the development of its growth and things do not seem to be getting better for the year 2024. Indeed, the economic situation is, according to the various readings of the experts, very delicate . A year strewn with doubt and whose growth will evolve with the wind of important events to come. To be continued !
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