WEF: Morocco “Positive Outlier” In Facilitating Trade in MENA Region

Rabat – Morocco saw a modest jump in the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Enabling Trade Index, which measures the presence of legal and logistical structures to facilitate trade in 136 countries and territories.

In the last rendition of the report in 2014, the kingdom stood at 52^nd place – three spots lower than the current 49^th place ranking.

The authors of the index identified Morocco as a “positive outlier” amongst developing countries, which generally performed worse than advanced economies since “trade and development feed off each other,” the report said.

The index took into account seven “pillars” to compile the rankings: domestic and foreign market access, efficiency of border administration, quality of transport infrastructure and related services, the availability of information technologies and the overall operating environment.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations all saw their positions stagnate or fall in the index over the past two years, due to the group’s dependence on oil and gas related activities.

Algeria’s new trade enabling policies, which increase economic integration in the western Mediterranean, caused the country to move up six positions in the rankings, though it remains at the bottom of the list at 121^st place.

At 134^th place, Yemen took the lowest position in the region, due to the Arabian Peninsula country’s ongoing civil unrest, which recently resulted in the establishment of a Houthi rebel-led government based in Sanaa.

Overall, the Middle East and North Africa performed third-best of all regions, with progress spurred by average tariff cuts of one percent from 9.2 percent to 8.2 in the previous couple of years.

Sub-Saharan African countries improved the most in this edition of the index, with all but four countries – Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Mauritania – rising in the rankings by enhancing market access to foreign companies.