Speaking at a press briefing after the Council of Government, Lekjaa said that the rise in prices of some consumer goods is explained mainly by the unexpected economic recovery in the world and the continued increase in prices of cereals and oil products on the international market.
For cereals, he explained, international prices have risen to 315 dollars / ton, against 290 dollars / ton in 2021, an increase of 34% compared to a normal year. He added that due to geopolitical conditions and the increase in freight prices and international transport, the price of a quintal of grain on the international market rose to 340 dirhams in 2022, after 260 dirhams a year earlier.
In view of these circumstances, the state has adopted a series of measures, the first of which is the suspension of customs duties on wheat imports in two periods, from February to May 15, 2021 and from November 2021 to next April, the minister said.
In a normal year, these customs duties amount to 550 million dirhams, which means that their suspension leads to losses of the same amount, said Lekjaa, adding that this measure alone is now "insufficient”.
The minister also stressed that without the intervention of the state in subsidizing imported cereals, the price of a quintal would have reached 340 dirhams, which would bring to 350 dirhams the price of a quintal of flour to impact upward prices of all products based on this commodity.
The state devotes, under a normal year, 1.3 billion dirhams for the subsidy of flour which is sold on the market at 200 dirhams per quintal, he said. In 2021, the state has allocated 3.28 billion dirhams, which corresponds to a loss of an additional MAD 2 bln.
In 2022, and in the current conditions, without mentioning future developments, especially the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, Lekjaa noted that the preservation of balances will cost the state more than 1.91 billion dirhams, in addition to 1.3 billion dirhams of flour subsidy. The state should thus allocate credits of MAD 3.844 bln until the end of 2022.
Regarding petroleum products, the Minister stressed that the price of butane gas is set on the local market at 3.33 dirhams per kilogram (kg), noting that this price "has not changed since 1990", which means that a bottle of gas 12 Kg is sold at 40 dirhams and 3 kg at 10 dirhams.
At the international level, the price of butane gas is currently (from January to February 14) of 854 dollars per ton, while it was 530 dollars per ton in 2020 and 509 dollars per ton in 2021, an increase of 60% compared to 2020 and 2021, due to geopolitical tensions and constraints related to the pandemic, he said.
In Morocco, the real price of a 12 kg bottle of gas is 130 dirhams, which means that the state subsidizes each bottle with 90 dirhams, explained the minister, adding that the overall burden of this subsidy has increased from MAD 9 bln in 2020 to nearly MAD 14 bln in 2021, a rise of 60%.
Regarding liquid petroleum products, such as gasoline for example, its price was about 70 dollars in 2020, before climbing to 88 dollars in 2021 and 97 dollars in 2022, the highest price since 2014, which explains the increase in fuel on the domestic market that crossed the barrier of 10 dirhams in November 2021 and 10.9 dirhams in February 2022.
He stressed that the tax on petroleum products in Morocco is 10%, unlike neighboring countries, where it is 20%, noting that the weight of taxes in the composition of the final selling price is 37% for diesel and 47% on the side of gasoline, against respectively 53% and 62% in several countries.