Out of a total of 78,244 business creations, the Casablanca-Settat region leads with nearly 25,000 new units, representing around a third of all registered businesses.
Morocco registered 78,244 new businesses during the first ten months of 2024, according to data communicated by the Moroccan Office of Industrial and Commercial Property (OMPIC).
The statistics reveal that 56,292 of these creations concerned legal entities, while 21,952 were individual businesses.
The commercial sector emerged as the main driver of business creation, representing 34.73% of total new businesses, followed by construction and real estate activities, which account for 19.36%. Service industries occupy the third position with 18.47%, while transportation, manufacturing and hospitality sectors account for 8.07%, 7.3% and 5.63% respectively. The information technology, financial services and agriculture sectors have more modest shares, with 2.79%, 1.99% and 1.67%, respectively.
Regarding geographical distribution, Casablanca-Settat comes first with 24,571 new businesses, followed by Tangier-Tétouan-Al Hoceima with 11,328 and Rabat-Salé-Kénitra with 9,121. Marrakech-Safi records 8,875 new businesses , while other regions such as Fès-Meknes and Souss-Massa respectively account for 5,409 and 5,323 new creations.
Limited liability companies (SARL) emerged as the preferred legal structure, representing 64.9% of new businesses, while single-member limited liability companies (SARLAU) made up 34.5%. Limited companies (SA) and branches, for their part, represent only 0.3% and 0.1% of creations respectively.
-These figures are part of a context marked by significant challenges facing Moroccan companies. Recent data from the Moroccan Observatory of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) reveals that only 15% of the country’s businesses are run by women, a percentage that has remained stable since 2020. Women’s businesses face particular difficulties in accessing to bank credit, since only 14.6% of them obtain loans.
The sustainability of new businesses is also a concern, since only 53% of them manage to survive beyond their first five years, according to a joint report from the World Bank and the Moroccan MSME Observatory.
The situation is expected to deteriorate further, with Allianz Trade forecasting a 13% increase in business bankruptcies in 2024, followed by a further 8% increase in 2025. Their report anticipates the number of insolvencies will reach 16,100 in 2024, an increase of 101% compared to the average for the years 2016-2019.
The majority of formal businesses in Morocco remain small, with the majority less than a decade old and averaging fewer than 10 employees. Even mature companies, with more than ten years of activity, remain relatively small, with on average only 26 employees.
MK/SF/ac/APA
