Rabat – The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved an €87 million loan that is set to support the consolidation of an integrated and inclusive social protection program in Morocco.
In a statement released today, the continental bank said that the loan reinforces the extension of social protection to seven million children and young people as well as eleven million self-employed to meet Moroccans’ growing demands for health services.
The statement added that the program seeks to attract new investments in health infrastructure, improve the business climate, and accelerate economic recovery to restructure the supply of health care and provide training to human capital.
The program would further assist the integration of 20% of informal economy workers into the former sector for “sustainable and more stable employment,” noted the statement.
“We are paving the way for universal coverage,” said Achraf Hassan Tarsim, the AfDB’s Country Manager in Morocco.
Martha Phiri, the pan-African bank’s Director for Human Capital, Youth, and Skills Development, stressed that the support program would improve the quality of human capital, adding that “social protection is a major focus of [the bank’s] initiatives in Africa.”
In November 2021, the Moroccan government pledged to introduce medical coverage to three million people as part of the country’s new regulations on pension and the Compulsory Health Insurance scheme.
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Seven months later, Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture reported that approximately 800,000 out of 1.6 targeted farmers benefitted from social security coverage, bringing the country a step closer to universal coverage.
The need to expand social protection services to all Moroccans was more prevalent during the successive COVID lockdowns.
Despite being among the hardest hit by the far-reaching repercussions of the COVID crisis, individuals working in the informal economy in numerous sectors such as tourism and trade did not benefit from state support due to their irregular status.
With “generalized social security” featuring among King Mohammed VI’s policy priorities, the dire situation of informal workers at the height and in the aftermath of the COVID lockdowns served as a sharp reminder of the urgent need to accelerate Morocco’s sweeping social protection agenda.
Yet, as the North African country has the MENA’s highest rate of labor participation in the informal economy, estimated at more than 70% by the World Bank, the regularization of such a large population would be a long-term challenge.
