A budget of one billion dirhams (MMD) will be allocated to the program to rehabilitate the weekly souks, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said on Tuesday.
Responding to an oral question in the House of Advisors, Mr. Laftit indicated that this program, which was developed by his department with its partners, will be financed jointly by the Ministry of the Interior (500 million dirhams), the Ministry of Agriculture and Maritime Fisheries (250 MDH) and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (250 MDH).
The minister stressed that this “ambitious” program aims to overcome the dysfunctions in the weekly souks, through the organization of economic activity spaces, the promotion of local products, the strengthening of competitiveness and sustainable development, as well as as the improvement of the offer and the working conditions of traders and artisans, as well as those of access for people who frequent the souks, and this in a participatory framework with the two aforementioned ministries.
Alongside these measures, he continued, the Ministry of the Interior works to provide financial, technical and legal support to communities with a view to developing and modernizing local public facilities and services of a commercial nature, in particular weekly souks, noting that this support “is part of a new vision of reform, based on a set of principles capable of modernizing these installations and improving their services and developing their management methods”.
According to the minister, the number of weekly souks amounts to 822 souks, including 753 in rural areas and 69 in urban areas.
Furthermore, Mr. Laftit reported more than MAD 400 billion in revenue generated by wholesale markets at the local authority level, while their turnover reached MAD 7 billion, explaining that the number of official vegetable wholesale markets and fruits in Morocco amounts to 30 structured markets, in addition to eight unstructured parallel markets.
And to emphasize that the Ministry of the Interior is looking into the development of a legal framework for wholesale markets which aims to regulate their creation and rehabilitation, and to determine the necessary equipment and services which must be provided there, while going beyond current management models which contribute to the exacerbation of the problems facing the sector, by adopting modern management methods.
With MAP
