The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on Thursday the loan of 1.3 billion dollars to Morocco to enable the Shereef kingdom to finance its ecological transition as well as strengthen its capacities to deal with natural and climatic disasters.
The 18-month loan comes a month after a deadly earthquake but is not directly linked to it.
It intervenes within the framework of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) of the Fund, was approved by the board of directors, specified in the press release, and corresponds to one billion SDRs (or special drawing rights, the IMF calculation unit corresponding to a basket of the five main currencies).
This agreement should “enable Morocco to face its climate vulnerabilities, support its resilience to climate change and be able to seize opportunities for decarbonization” of its economy, specifies the IMF.
“It will also help the Moroccan authorities to strengthen their preparedness capacities for natural disasters and stimulate financing for sustainable development,” added the press release.
This financing is part of the opening of a five billion dollar credit line granted to the North African country last April, an approach offered by the IMF that allows countries to quickly access the Fund’s resources, without ex-post conditionality.
The center of the country was hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake, according to the Moroccan Center for Scientific and Technical Research (6.8 according to the American Institute of Geophysics, USGS), the most powerful to have ever been measured in the kingdom.
The earthquake, which occurred on the night of September 8 to 9 in the province of Al-Haouz south of Marrakech, left nearly 3,000 dead and more than 5,600 injured, not counting the many people who found themselves without housing.
