In its 2023/24 annual report, the Court of Auditors, chaired by Zineb El Adaoui, sounds the alarm on the situation of public finances in the medium and long term. It highlights the major risks facing the pension system and emphasizes the urgency of structural reform to guarantee its sustainability.
The report points out the critical situation of the Moroccan Pension Fund (CMR), which has an alarming technical deficit of 9.8 billion dirhams in 2023. According to data from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the reserves of the CMR risks running out by 2028 if no corrective action is taken.
Faced with this situation, the government plans to deploy a comprehensive pension fund reform plan, with priority given to the CMR. Among the measures being considered are raising the retirement age and increasing contribution rates – proposals which are already sparking heated debate.
For the Court of Auditors, guaranteeing the sustainability of the system requires ambitious structural reform. In particular, it recommends expanding membership in retirement systems from 2025, by including people carrying out an activity without benefiting from a pension. The objective is clear: include uncovered workers to reduce inequalities and strengthen the financing of the system.
The report recalls that the parametric reforms put in place since 2016 for the CMR civil pensions system and in 2021 for the RCAR (Collective Retirement Allowance Scheme) were not sufficient to restore financial balance. Consequence: the depletion of reserves accelerates at varying timescales.
To remedy this, the Court recommends temporarily maintaining the optional nature of the regime for self-employed workers, while aiming for gradual generalization. She also insists on the need to offer this category a reasonable replacement rate, guaranteeing a decent pension. Finally, she suggests exploring alternative financing mechanisms, such as tax incentives.
Alongside these challenges, the Court of Auditors highlights the growing pressures on public finances. In a context marked by increased spending and difficulties in mobilizing resources, it calls for concrete measures to restore budgetary balances, control the public deficit and debt, rationalize the Treasury’s special accounts and ensure rigorous monitoring. of the performance of public finances.
The report places particular emphasis on the programming of budgetary expenditure. He insists on the importance of improving the planning of public expenditure of the three branches of the State: the general budget, autonomously managed public establishments, and the special accounts of the Treasury.
The Court of Auditors deplores the absence of formal and harmonized mechanisms for the selection, monitoring and evaluation of investment projects, at all phases of their cycle. She insists on the imperative of adopting an effective performance methodology to assess the quality of spending, noting that indicators linked to means still represent 50% of overall indicators.
Also, the Court recommends controlling compulsory expenditure, in particular those relating to civil servants’ salaries, the Treasury debt and subsidies from the compensation fund and improving the precision of three-year budget forecasts to guarantee their reliability.
It also recommends clarifying the conditions for using additional credits and freezing certain investments.
In order to optimize budgetary management, the Court of Auditors calls for better documentation of the work involving those involved in budgetary programming. She recommends clarifying responsibilities through the development of the Management Charter, mentioned in the circular from the Head of Government. In addition, it advocates secure interconnection of information systems and rigorous management control to guarantee data quality.
Finally, the Court of Auditors reaffirms the need to improve the budgetary programming of investments, by ensuring better control of credit carryovers and by integrating recurring expenditure linked to completed projects into the forecasts.
