Speaker at a meeting of the Committee on Education, Culture and Communication at the House of Representatives devoted to several themes related to the press sector including “the standards adopted for granting support to the press “, Mr. Bensaid specified that this support aims to strengthen the economic model of the press company, to encourage it to invest at the national and international levels and to improve the socio-economic conditions of journalists and employees in the sector.
After reviewing the provisions of the new decree specifying the conditions and modalities allowing the press, publishing, printing and distribution sectors to benefit from public aid, Mr. Bensaid affirmed that the condition for the regional daily written press to employ four professional journalists in order to benefit from public support aims to increase the number of journalists working in the sector.
In this regard, the minister called on press companies to create regional hubs with a view to consolidating their presence at the regional level and promoting the specialized press.
Concerning the mechanisms for implementing public aid, Mr. Bensaid explained that a program agreement will be signed in this regard, stressing that “the objective of this aid is to preserve jobs in press companies” .
Presenting the figures relating to exceptional support for the press, Mr. Bensaid specified that the amount of this support reached 325 million dirhams in 2024, devoted in particular to supporting the payroll and paying contributions to the National Fund of Social Security (CNSS) and income tax, indicating that this support began in 2020, following the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on press companies, with an amount of 164 million dirhams for the benefit of press companies working within a legal framework and declaring their journalists to the CNSS.
The flat-rate aid allocated to the press and publishing sector reached 35 million dirhams in 2024, in addition to 1.4 million dirhams intended to support the partisan press, he specified, noting that 9 million of dirhams have been allocated to the printing sector and 30 million to the publishing sector in 2023, as well as 9 million dirhams to printing in 2024, while the distribution sector has not benefited from any aid, given the debate around the economic model in relation to the nature of the said companies.
This meeting was an opportunity to look at the situation in the audio-visual sector, particularly on the stages of creating a unified public audio-visual pole “Holding” and the management of national public audio-visual communication companies for external production. and common television programs and films.
