The prices of some commodities have recently risen significantly. The situation raises concern and questions on the part of Moroccan households.
Is this increase in the prices of basic products temporary and what could explain it? Moroccan households ask themselves in search of answers to this situation which seriously impacts the basket of the housewife. This price increase is believed to be due to the surge in commodity prices worldwide and the prices of products imported from the United States and Europe, believes SNRT News.
The media also evokes the health crisis and the current period of international economic recovery marked by high demand and low supply. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the food price index rose 3% last October, reaching its highest level in ten years. The rise in world prices of vegetable oils and cereals justifies the increase in the FAO index of food products, adds the same source.
Morocco has taken steps to reduce the impact of this global crisis on the prices of various consumer products, in order to preserve and protect the purchasing power of Moroccan households. The government is following with “great interest” the rise in the prices of certain basic products, had assured Nadia Fettah Alaoui, the Minister of Economy and Finance before the House of Representatives, adding that the prices of subsidized products (flour, sugar, and butane gas) will remain stable thanks to the Compensation Fund, which will benefit from an endowment of more than MAD 16 billion in 2022, an increase of 28% compared to 2021.
In addition, the government has taken a series of measures to curb price increases. These include the recent suspension of tariffs on soft wheat and durum wheat imports as well as the continued suspension of tariffs on pulses and butter. With all these measures, Morocco manages to control inflation at relatively low levels (1.7%), when it reached + 4.1% in the Eurozone, + 6.2% in the United States and 4.2% in the UK.
