UNCTAD has listed Morocco among the top African countries in e-commerce readiness.
Rabat – The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued its B1C E-Commerce Index 2018, which listed Morocco among the top African countries in online shopping readiness.
Morocco also ranked 81st in the world, according to the same report.
According to the statistics provided by the report, “The biggest gain in secure Internet server penetration (normalized value) was in Morocco, with an increase of 15 percentage points.”
Mauritius tops the list of the African countries that have the best e-commerce shopping readiness, followed by Nigeria, South Africa, and Tunisia. Algeria ranked 17th in Africa and 111th globally.
In November, the government’s telecommunication regulator said that Morocco had 44,027,000 mobile subscribers as of June 30, 2018, and the number is only growing. The telecommunication regulator is also set to partner with Bank Al-Maghrib to launch “M-Wallet’ to ease online payment for shoppers.
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In 2017, the Moroccan Electronic Interbanking Center said that retail websites affiliated to the center registered MAD 2 billion in income in the first nine months of 2017. The number represented an increase of 51 percent from 2016.
The revenue came from 4.8 million online payment transactions via Moroccan and foreign credit cards, marking an increase of 86.2 percent.
Billing websites were the largest contributors, according to the CMI statistics. Airline websites came second with a share of 22.8 percent.
E-commerce in Morocco is developing and is still linked to the evolution of the digital economy. Morocco introduced the 2020 Morocco Digital Plan, which aims to accelerate digital transformation and promote e-commerce.
The North African country also seeks to strengthen its digital exports and become a regional digital hub.
In November, Head of Government Saad Eddine El Othmani said that Morocco wants to promote the best international practices in the business world, such as “simplification and digitization of administrative procedures, the modernization of the company’s legal and legislative frameworks, the universalization of the single portal as well as the improvement of benefits in their favor.”