RABAT, January 26, 2012 (AFP)
RABAT, January 26, 2012 (AFP)
Moroccan lawmakers endorsed Thursday the new Islamist government and its economic blueprint, which seeks to boost growth and reduce the country’s high unemployment.
The plan for the next four years aims to take Morocco’s growth rate to 5.5 percent and keep inflation at about two percent, while also creating jobs to bring down unemployment to eight percent.
Unemployment is perhaps the country’s toughest challenge. More than 30 percent of people aged under 34 are out of work and the official total for the workforce as a whole is nearly 10 percent.
Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, whose Islamist party won a November poll called early by the king to preempt swelling Arab Spring-inspired protests, has vowed to address the issue.
Benkirane is expected later to travel to Switzerland on his first overseas trip as prime minister to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Morocco’s growth rate was 4.5 percent in 2010 and was expected to be about the same for last year.
Thousands of Moroccans with university degrees who are seeking jobs in the civil service have been demonstrating almost daily to voice frustration at the lack of employment prospects in the country of 33 million.
On January 18, two young men set themselves on fire to protest lack of access to government jobs. One of them died Tuesday.
