This article offers a historical overview of industrial policy in Morocco from independence in 1956 through to the late 1990s. It examines the achievements and limitations of these policies and situates them within their broader political, social and international contexts. The article concludes with an overall assessment of those policies.
- A Capitalist Accumulation Model Centred on State Intervention
Morocco inherited from colonial rule an economy of underdevelopment based on agriculture and extractive activities and oriented toward serving the colonial metropole. After independence, the monarchy’s primary concern was to consolidate political authority in the face of a bourgeois nationalist movement represented by the Istiqlal Party and the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP). The monarchy remained cautious about rapid industrialisation, fearing that it would produce a powerful bourgeois class capable of challenging royal authority.[1]
By contrast, the left of the nationalist movement, represented by the UNFP, sought to build an independent national economy. Its programme took the form of a five-year plan centred on industrialisation, agrarian reform, the establishment of a national currency, and the creation of national economic institutions. Further, it called for strong state intervention. This approach aligned with the post-World War II global emergence of the idea of the welfare state. Abdelrahim Bouabid, Minister of National Economy in the Abdallah Ibrahim government (1959–1960), drew on Keynesian ideas adapted to the conditions of a newly independent country. He viewed the state’s economic functions as instruments for modernising society and structuring relations between the state and society.[2]
The central economic conflict between the left wing of the nationalist movement and the monarchy concerned which sector should be prioritised: industrialisation, advocated by the left, or agriculture, favoured by the monarchy. The latter ultimately prevailed. This decision was largely political, as the monarchy’s social base at the time was concentrated in rural areas. Consequently, it opposed measures that might weaken the economic position of rural notables or signal the onset of broader structural reforms.[3]
In the early 1960s, after consolidating its rule and defeating the left wing of the nationalist movement, the monarchy embraced economic liberalism and aligned with the West. Moroccan bosses, however, largely avoided productive investment,[4] preferring short-term investments and capital gains from real estate speculation.[5] This reluctance led the monarchy to return to a five-year planning policy and to take responsibility for building industrial infrastructure, though this effort was confined to light industries.
The state soon confronted a major obstacle:financing. This created an opening for intervention by the World Bank and the IMF, which imposed an economic model centred on agriculture and tourism. As ATTAC Morocco observed in its memorandum on the New Development Model report:
The first recommendations of the World Bank and the IMF in the early 1960s focused on the need for Morocco to rely on export-oriented agriculture as the foundational pillar of its post-independence “development model,” and to finance it through loans. This strategy ultimately plunged the country into a debt spiral when it became unable to service its debt by the late 1970s.[6]
Morocco inherited from colonial rule an industrial base concentrated in Casablanca, where steel, mechanical, electrical, agro-food and textile industries were clustered. To promote the emergence of a domestic capitalist class, the state relied on instruments such as import substitution,[7] protectionist measures, and the ‘Moroccanisation’ policy.
One of the first postcolonial strategies adopted was import substitution. This policy aimed to replace imported goods with domestic production, reduce dependence on advanced economies, and develop national industrial activity oriented toward the domestic market. Its objective was to build a productive base capable of lowering the share of imports in aggregate supply.[8]
From independence until 1972, the state prioritised import substitution. This policy focused on light manufacturing industries, particularly food processing and textiles, and relied on instruments such as tariff protection, incentives and public investment.[9] Priority was given to sectors expected to contribute most to economic growth, namely food industries and textiles and leather, collectively classified as ‘light industries’, mainly oriented toward domestic demand. In practice, however, this focus reflected less a deliberate strategic choice than Morocco’s assigned position in the international division of labour. It also stemmed from the country’s inability to invest in other sectors, especially heavy and processing industries, which were monopolised by advanced industrial countries and effectively closed to Global South economies.
This mechanism was intended to lay the foundations of an independent local industrial structure. According to its early proponents, its benefits were expected to unfold in three stages. The first stage involved importing capital goods, including machinery and equipment used to produce final or consumer goods and services, as well as raw materials for manufacturing consumer goods. The second stage focused on expanding consumer-goods production while beginning to produce basic machinery and intermediate goods, still dependent on imported capital goods. The third and final stage envisioned the domestic production of capital goods. This final stage, however, did not materialise in most Third World countries,[10] and was never seriously contemplated by Morocco’s rulers.
Assessments of this strategy generated considerable debates, yet there is broad agreement that it was a positive endeavour. Economic growth was fastest during the decade in which import substitution was prioritised, with an average annual rate of 11%. By the late 1960s,[11] consumer goods had fallen to around 10% of total imports. This decline, however, was offset by a rise in imports of capital goods,[12] which widened the trade deficit. Foreign capital also dominated segments of consumer-goods production, limiting the capacity of domestic firms to improve their competitiveness.
A 2014 report by the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies acknowledged these limitations:
Despite pursuing an import-substitution policy, Morocco failed to increase the share of domestic production in the overall supply of manufactured goods, and no transformation occurred in the pre-production phase. By the late 1970s, Morocco was covering only 10% of its needs for capital equipment and 47% of its needs for electrical and electronic equipment.[13]
The report attributes this failure to shortcomings in the private sector, despite the incentives provided. It therefore concludes that the industrial ambitions associated with this strategy were ultimately abandoned. The report also argues that the outcome resulted from the purportedly negative effects of protectionist policies.
The historical record shows that protectionism has often been a necessary condition for industrial advancement, and most advanced countries relied on it during key phases of their industrialisation. In Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano cites a revealing statement by U.S. President Ulysses Grant (1869–1877):
For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes, and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within two hundred years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.[14]
As Galeano observes, the wealthy nations that promote free trade in fact maintain some of the most restrictive protectionist policies against poorer countries, while preventing them from adopting similar measures.
In Morocco, protectionism complemented import substitution and aimed to foster and protect the emergence of a domestic private sector.[15] All sectors prioritised under import substitution were shielded from international competition through a range of measures. According to the state’s 2005 report assessing 50 years of development, these policies sought to promote national industry by initially supporting import-substitution industries and introducing protective customs tariffs.[16] Measures included adjusting the entry prices of imported goods competing with domestic products and establishing a preferential tariff structure. Lower rates were applied to raw materials and semi-processed products. Consumer goods, by contrast, were subject to relatively high tariffs designed to support domestic production.
This tariff protection was reinforced by direct controls on imports, including outright bans on certain goods, the establishment of quotas, and prohibitions on importing products priced below a predetermined minimum.
The structural financial crisis exposed the fragility of the economic base required for industrialisation. This weakness was not inevitable but the result of deliberate choices
This policy led to the emergence of so-called ‘national champions’, namely dominant conglomerates such as ONA (Omnium Nord-Africain), Royal Air Maroc, Maroc Telecom, SONASID, and the OCP (Office Chérifien des Phosphates) Group. However, several assessments have highlighted the limits of this approach in transforming Morocco’s productive structures. Constrained by a small domestic market,[17] the state was compelled to promote export-oriented industries. Because such industries require international competitiveness, the state introduced a range of incentives, including special customs regimes that exempted imported raw materials and intermediate capital goods used in export production from customs duties. Another line of critique argues that excessive protectionism suppresses competition by sustaining non-viable firms and discouraging investment in local technological capabilities. From this perspective, international competition rewards firms able to survive and grow while eliminating those that cannot.[18]
Protectionist policies were abandoned with the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme in 1983. As political scientist Myriam Catusse notes, ‘while only 38% of imports were liberalised in 1983, this share had risen to 90% by 1995’.[19]
1.3 The Law of Moroccanisation
The state’s ambition to build a domestic industry collided with the dominance of foreign (especially French) capital, in key segments of Morocco’s industrial sector. Alongside import substitution and protectionist measures, the state therefore enacted the Moroccanisation Law on 2 March 1973, which meant transferring the ownership of companies previously owned by foreigners into the hands of Moroccans.
According to economist Najib Akesbi, the law identified two lists of activities subject to ‘Moroccanisation’, mandating that at least 50% of the capital in companies operating in these sectors be transferred to Moroccan individuals or legal entities. The first list covered construction and public works, trade, transport, food industries, automobile manufacturing, fertilisers, and selected services. The second included banks, insurance companies, and commercial and industrial activities not listed in the first category, such as milling, leather and electrical equipment.[20]
In his assessment, Akesbi judges the overall outcomes of this law to be disappointing:
When measured against its stated objectives, the results were disappointing. Fewer than half of the companies concerned were actually Moroccanised. The remaining firms either ceased operations or altered their activities to circumvent the law, unless exempted by the committee overseeing the process. Moreover, effective control often remained external.[21] This became particularly evident when newly Moroccanised foreign firms were allowed to Moroccanise other companies through layered shareholding structures and the use of shell companies or proxy individuals. Finally, rather than creating a middle class of Moroccan entrepreneurs capable of leading the national economy, the process largely resulted in the appropriation of a substantial share of Moroccanised assets by a small number of powerful families, who benefited from their proximity to political power and their ties to foreign financiers and partners.[22]
Following the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme, the state repealed the Moroccanisation Law.[23] Beginning in 1993, Morocco initiated widespread privatisation of the public sector. Through this broad wave of privatisation, foreign capital returned and recovered much of what it had previously lost under Moroccanisation.
Galeano draws a parallel with Mexico, where the state similarly pursued a policy of Mexicanisation.
The obligatory ‘Mexicanisation’ of capital, under which nationals must hold the majority of shares in some industries, has, according to the Secretary of Industry and Commerce, ‘generally speaking been well received by foreign investors, who have publicly recognised various advantages in the creation of mixed enterprises’. …It should be noted that even internationally renowned enterprises have adopted this form of partnership in companies they have established in Mexico, and it should also be stressed that the policy of Mexicanisation of industry has not only not discouraged foreign investment in Mexico, but that after this investment flow broke a record in 1965, the volume reached in that year was again exceeded in 1966.[24]
- A Changing Context
To implement these policies, the Moroccan state capitalised on rising global phosphate prices. It maintained a planning-oriented approach and pursued an industrial strategy based on selective protectionism and import substitution, while increasingly orienting production toward exports, particularly to the newly established European Community.
This trajectory was disrupted in the mid-1970s by major global shifts, including the oil shock and the decline in phosphate prices, as well as by domestic pressures, most notably the high costs of the Sahara War.[25] In the early 1980s, these combined factors culminated in a debt crisis, leading the IMF to impose a Structural Adjustment Programme in 1983.
Morocco subsequently shifted away from import substitution and partial protectionism toward an export-oriented strategy aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of Moroccan firms in global markets, alongside broader trade liberalisation. During this phase, Morocco entered negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1987 and later joined the World Trade Organization, whose founding conference was held in Marrakech in 1995.
Thus, privatisation reached unprecedented levels, as the state formally announced its withdrawal from productive sectors.[26]According to Myriam Catusse, the 114 companies slated for privatisation in 1989 alone accounted for 40% of the state’s portfolio. These included major industrial firms, particularly in the cement, steel, petroleum, phosphate and mining sectors, as well as four of the country’s main banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, and service firms. Privatisation was also extended to public services, including postal and telecommunications services, transport, slaughterhouses and state-owned water and electricity companies, among others.[27]
The outcomes of macroeconomic stabilisation and the Structural Adjustment Programme were largely detrimental. Total investment, which had grown at an average annual rate of 9.8% during the 1960s and 1970s, slowed sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, registering an average growth rate of only 4.1%. Economic growth over this period was neither robust nor sustained. After averaging 3.5% in the 1960s and rising to 5% between 1970 and 1982, growth declined again to an average of 3.2% between 1982 and 2000 (see Table 1).[28]
Table 1. Average Economic Growth, 1960–2000
| Period | 1960s | 1970–1982 | 1982–2000 |
| Average economic growth | 3.5% | 5.0% | 3.2% |
In 1995, the World Bank issued a report warning of an impending economic collapse in Morocco. This period coincided with the transition of power from Hassan II to his successor, Mohammed VI, as well as the total capitulation of the liberal opposition, represented by the Socialist Union of Popular Forces. The party’s incorporation into the puppet government in 1998 marked the abandonment of any remaining ambition to construct a national economic project.
Following Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne in 1999, the system of five-year planning was officially abandoned in 2003 and replaced, beginning in 2005, by sector-based strategies. The goal of the latter was to secure industrial takeoff by targeting external markets, particularly European ones, and by prioritising so-called ‘global professions’, notably the automotive, aerospace and electronics industries. Foreign investment was presented as the primary instrument for achieving structural transformation and diversifying Morocco’s economic fabric.
This marked the end of an era and the beginning of another, albeit with significant continuity. As Catusse observes, ‘these transformations in the Moroccan state’s economic capacities, unfolding amid rapid liberalisation, do not indicate a withdrawal of the state. Rather, they reflect a reconfiguration of public authority through new techniques and forms of economic governance’.[29]
Importers have become a distinct social force in Morocco, one whose interests run counter to national industrialisation.
The underlying objective, however, remained unchanged: to deploy economic policy in support of private capital. During the latter half of the twentieth century, state intervention largely operated on behalf of a small and investment-constrained Moroccan private sector. By contrast, the sectoral strategies of the early twenty-first century aimed to strengthen domestic capital so that it could withstand international competition under capitalist globalisation. Despite neoliberalism, public investment did not decline, nor did the creation of public enterprises and institutions contract; on the contrary, both expanded significantly. This expansion, however, was not intended to replace the private sector. Rather, it sought to build extensive infrastructure placed at the service of the private sector and to create public enterprises and institutions whose activities were delegated to private actors through management contracts and public–private partnerships.[30]
- The Failure of Previous Industrial Policies to Promote Industrialisation
So far, this study has presented various assessments of the failure of import substitution, protectionism and Moroccanisation. However, these arguments provide partial explanations as they focus largely on policy instruments rather than the broader structural context within which they are forged. One notable exception is Akesbi’s analysis, which emphasises the role of economic monopolies sustained by concentrated political power.
Any Third World economies adopted similar industrial policies following decolonisation. Some achieved limited success; others failed. These strategies were dismantled under the capitalist counteroffensive that emerged from the late 1970s onward under the banner of neoliberal globalisation. Morocco followed this broader trajectory, though with more modest ambitions and policies that were far less radical than those implemented in countries such as Egypt, Algeria or across much of Latin America.
The Iraqi historian Issam Khafaji offers a more systematic assessment of these experiences,[31] arguing that: ‘The capitalist state intervenes when capitalism itself is unable to fulfill its required functions. The form and scope of this intervention vary according to the level of capitalism’s domestic and global development’.
The will of political power, regardless of its level of ambition, cannot transcend the historical conditions within which it operates. Industrial policies are inevitably shaped by a country’s economic and human resources at the time of their adoption, as well as by the prevailing class structure and the economic orientation toward which those capacities are mobilised, or left idle.
After political independence, Morocco’s economy remained heavily dependent on agriculture and highly vulnerable to climatic fluctuations. The industrial sector inherited from France was limited and largely oriented toward serving the needs of the colonial metropole. At the same time, the Moroccan bourgeoisie was predominantly a traditional merchant class. Further, a segment of Moroccan capitalists was reluctant to undertake long-term investment, instead favouring activities with rapid returns, such as small-scale services and real estate speculation. The ruling monarchy also chose to conform to an international division of labour that confined the country to specialisation in agriculture and raw materials.
The structural financial crisis exposed the fragility of the economic base required for industrialisation.[32] This weakness was not inevitable but the result of deliberate choices. The Moroccan bourgeoisie largely avoided financing structural transformation, forcing the state to assume this role through external borrowing and taxes on consumption and income. External debt deepened the dependence of both the economy and the state on foreign creditors, while taxation constrained the expansion of the domestic market, a key condition for industrialisation. As a result, the Moroccan economy has since remained closely tied to foreign economies in both financing and exports.
Another factor in Morocco’s industrial failure was the public sector’s limited capacity to steer the process. The issue was not the volume of public investment or output, but the inability of state-controlled sectors including agriculture, services, particularly tourism, and light consumer goods to transform the productive structure.
The latter sector, in particular, depended heavily on imported capital goods. This reliance widened the trade deficit and reproduced the unequal exchange relations established under colonialism. Supplying domestic industry through imports also limited the capacity of public procurement to support the development of a national industrial base. This constraint was further reinforced by Morocco’s dependence on a specific core country, France, which imposed oppressive purchasing conditions. Such dependence restricted the diversification of trade partners and reduced opportunities for technology localisation.
Expanding trade relations, particularly with more industrially advanced countries in the Global South and with socialist states, could have encouraged the domestic production of capital goods. Instead, industrial policy remained limited to substituting consumer goods.[33]
The state’s economic surplus can serve as a critical lever for industrial investment. In Morocco, however, much of this surplus flowed abroad through foreign firms that continued to dominate key segments of the production sector, despite policies of import substitution and the law of Moroccanisation, as well as through capital-goods imports and unequal exchange. The state also lacked control over technology, a core requirement for industrialisation, and was therefore unable to deploy it in line with domestic development needs. As Galeano observed in his assessment of Argentina under Perón, ‘the state did not realise in time that if it did not give birth to a technology of its own, its nationalist policy would take flight with clipped wings’.[34]
Morocco’s approach to import substitution was limited in scope and differed markedly from the more ambitious strategies pursued elsewhere in the Global South. In Latin America, policies in the 1930s and 1940s, and the work of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in the 1950s, aimed to meet domestic demand by replacing imports with locally produced goods. This framework aimed to extend the process gradually across all industrial sectors by creating a structural break with the metropolitan centre.[35]
The Moroccan experience diverged sharply from this logic. Import substitution was confined to a narrow range of consumer goods and never achieved comprehensive import replacement. Moreover, the state did not seek any rupture with the centre; on the contrary, its economic policies sought to reinforce those bonds of inequality.
Neoliberal ideology opposed all forms of state intervention in the economy, portraying the public sector as inherently inefficient while praising the private sector and deifying the free market. Fiscal deficits and alleged technical shortcomings of public institutions were routinely cited as evidence. This argument, however, ignored the basic reality that a deficit in one sector corresponds to a surplus in another.
This reasoning, developed in earlier critical work and addressed by Khafaji, was later reinforced by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its 2013 Trade and Development Report: ‘A reduction/increase in the public sector deficit appears either as a reduction or as an increase in the private sector surplus… This, in itself, was not considered problematic: it is natural for surpluses to accumulate in the private sector, since its presumed objective is the accumulation of wealth’. [36]
Attributing these shortcomings to the nature of the public sector offers little analytical insight. The private sector’s supposed efficiency was in fact made possible by its dependence on the public sector. During the period of import substitution, protectionism and Moroccanisation, private firms were effectively sustained by the state, particularly through public procurement. A government document issued to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Morocco’s independence explicitly acknowledged this dynamic, noting that ‘state support for the private sector operated primarily through the public procurement of goods and services from Moroccan firms. These contracts were so significant that they shaped patterns of private wealth accumulation’.[37]
This orientation lay at the heart of the industrial policies adopted by the Moroccan state after independence. While these policies succeeded in fostering a local bourgeoisie, they failed to deliver industrialisation or structural transformation. Moroccan industrial capital remained dependent on foreign capital through subcontracting arrangements. Today, the development of Morocco’s so-called ‘global professions’ relies almost entirely on foreign investment. Moroccan capital, by contrast, is largely confined to subcontracting activities at the lowest tiers of the value chain, including transport, the supply of basic products, and services such as security and cleaning.
Industrialisation depends on a set of conditions that are only minimally addressed, if not entirely excluded, in the contemporary Moroccan literature: class and social conditions. Moroccan private capital is well aware of its limited capacity to penetrate or compete in global markets, while the state remains embedded in relations of financial dependence and subordination to global capital.
As a result, post-independence industrial policies were oriented toward developing private capital within the confines the international division of labour established under colonialism. For the public sector to generate a qualitative leap in industrialisation and structural transformation, would require political and social conditions capable of altering the class character of the state itself. Such a shift would entail a state positioned against the classes that benefit from the existing order, one able to confront the growing power of private capital through countervailing measures rather than continued capitulations.
In Morocco, the state has primarily reflected the interests of specific fractions of Moroccan capital, particularly large private capital and rural notables closely linked to colonial centres old and new. A structural transformation in the system of production has therefore never aligned with their interests. This configuration continues to shape Moroccan capital today. It is characterised by highly concentrated and internationalised large capital, dominated by import-oriented actors who prioritise profit accumulation through trade rather than the development of a local production structure. At the same time, firms commonly described as ‘national champions’ are largely owned by the royal family and its inner circle and remain deeply intertwined with European and Gulf capital.
For the public sector to generate a qualitative leap in industrialisation and structural transformation, would require political and social conditions capable of altering the class character of the state itself.
Importers have become a distinct social force in Morocco, one whose interests run counter to national industrialisation. In his assessment of export promotion policies, economist Najib Akesbi summarised this outcome succinctly, arguing that Morocco sought to ‘export everything’ but ultimately ended up ‘importing everything’. He noted that Morocco’s trade openness index[38] is among the highest in the world, at approximately 87%.[39]
In a separate interview, Akesbi added: ’Most of our stakeholders prefer to specialise in import activities rather than exports. While there are roughly 5,000 registered exporters, no more than five hundred operate on a regular and sustained basis. By contrast, the number of importers stands at approximately 25,000’.[40]
At the opposite end of the social structure, smallholders dealt a devastating blow from the very outset of political independence. In 1958, the monarchy, in collaboration with the Spanish and French armies, dismantled what could have become the political expression of Moroccan smallholders, i.e., the National Liberation Army. That same year, the state violently repressed an uprising of small farmers in the Rif region, a former zone of Spanish colonial rule.
These events enabled the monarchy to appropriate more than one million hectares of colonial land and to use it to construct a rural agrarian bourgeoisie. This class highlighted the tensions between the city and the countryside, as it became a key social base of support for the monarchy in its confrontation with the urban-based parties of the nationalist movement. As Paul Pascon observed, impoverished peasants bore a significant share of the financial burden of the prevailing capitalist development model: ‘Even though poor farmers do not pay direct taxes, they are heavily affected by indirect taxes and pricing policies. An analysis of price and tax structures shows that small farmers ultimately bear the costs of development’.[41]
From the early 1960s onward, Moroccan agricultural policy relied on tax exemptions to support agricultural capital. In this context, Omar Aziki, Secretary General of ATTAC Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) Morocco, observed:
The agricultural sector benefited from a full tax exemption since 1984, following a decree by Hassan II. From 2014 onward, the state adopted a gradual taxation framework in response to pressure from large-scale farmers. Under this system, taxes were only levied on agricultural companies with annual turnover equal to or exceeding 35 million dirhams (approximately €3.36 million) in the 2014 fiscal year. Those with a turnover above 20 million dirhams (approximately €1.92 million) were deferred until 1 January 2016, those exceeding 10 million dirhams (approximately €960,000) until 1 January 2018, and those reaching 5 million dirhams (approximately €480,000) were incorporated into the tax regime only in 2020.[42]
Together, these dynamics narrowed the domestic market, undermining a key condition for local industrialisation. A similar logic applied to the working class. The state adopted low wages as a strategy to facilitate the primitive accumulation of capital in Morocco, reinforcing this approach through severe repression of the workers’ movement and the co-optation and corruption of its bureaucratic leadership.
Under such conditions, industrial policy could not produce structural transformation or industrialisation. The literature on industrial policies adopted in the first two decades of the twenty-first century recognises this problem. These policies, commonly described as sectoral strategies, have relied on an export-led growth model centred on so-called ‘global professions’, and on integration into global value chains. The structural obstacles to industrialisation inherited from the second half of the twentieth century thus remain firmly in place and continue to pose a serious barrier.
Ali Amouzai
- This article is adapted from the study entitled “Green Industrialisation in Morocco”. It was originally published under the title “The History of Industrial Policy in Morocco”.
[1] Waterbury, J. Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan political elite. Transl. Abdelghani Abou El Azm, Abdelahad Sebti, and Abdellatif Faleq. Rabat: Al Ghani Publishing Foundation, 3rd ed., p. 434.
[2]Jabrou, A. L. (1993), Abderrahim Bouabid: National Sovereignty and the Dignity of the Citizen, Vol. I (1941–1961), Casablanca: Al-Najah Al-Jadida Printing Press. 1st ed., pp. 6–7.
[3] Leveau, R. (2011), The Moroccan Peasant, Defender of the Throne, trans. Mohamed Bencheikh, Rabat: Viewpoint Publications. 1st ed., p. 7.
[4] This argument is frequently used to explain the absence of industrialisation in the Global South, yet it offers limited analytical insight. Issam Khafaji provides a more compelling explanation:
‘Rising risks in commercial capitalist activity, combined with declining expected returns, encouraged investors, at least in the short term, to direct capital toward sectors perceived as more secure and profitable. This challenges claims that underdevelopment results from a lack of “entrepreneurial spirit” or “risk-taking” among capitalists in so-called backward countries. Investment choices are instead governed by the law of value: when one sector yields higher returns than another, it is unreasonable to expect investors to choose the latter.
‘At the level of individual investors, it is unrealistic to assume that decisions will be guided by the needs of economic development or notions of “social profitability.” This dynamic provides an additional justification for state intervention, even when the state itself invests from the standpoint of long-term capitalist growth, that is, from the perspective of “collective capital.”’
—Khafaji, I. (1979). National State Capitalism. Beirut: Ibn Khaldun Press, 1st ed., p. 91.
[5] Moumni, N. (2019), ‘Financement du développement industriel’, In El Aoufi, N. and Billaudot, B. (eds.) Made in Maroc Made in Monde, Vol. 1, Industrialisation et développement. Rabat: Économie critique.
[6] ATTAC Morocco (9 September 2021), ‘General Memorandum on the Report of the Special Commission on the New Development Model: For another possible Morocco, and an economy that breaks with the neoliberal capitalist model’. https://attacmaroc.org/مذكرة-عامة-حول-تقرير-اللجنة-الخاصة-بال/
[7] Meeting domestic demand by substituting imported products with the development of local production, based on a substantial degree of protectionism and coordinated state intervention aimed at fostering emerging industries (Toussaint, E. (2022) The World Bank: A critical history. Paris: Éditions Syllepse. trans. ATTAC Morocco).
[8] Ghoufrane, A., Boubrahimi, N. and Diani, A. (2014) Industrialisation and Morocco’s Global Competitiveness. Rabat: Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES). https://www.ires.ma/fr/publications/rapports-thematiques/industrialisation-et-competitivite-globale-du-maroc
[9] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report (2005), ‘Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025: General Report’, published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Morocco’s independence.
[10] El Aoufi, N. and Billaudot, B. (eds.) Made in Maroc Made in Monde, Vol. 1
[11] Ghoufrane, Boubrahimi and Diani. Industrialisation and Morocco’s Global Competitiveness.
[12] Aissaoui, S. (2019). ‘Industrialisation et développement : le rôle de l’innovation’. In El Aoufi and Billaudot (eds.). Made in Morocco, Made in Monde, Vol, 1: Industrialisation and Development.
[13] Ghoufrane, Boubrahimi and Diani. Industrialisation and Morocco’s Global Competitiveness.
[14] Galeano, E. (1997). Open Veins of Latin America. (Trans. C. Belfrage). New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 200–201.
[15] Piveteau, A., Askour, K. and Touzani, H. (2019) ‘L’industrialisation au Maroc : des trajectoires visées au processus observé’. In El Aoufi and Billaudot (eds.). Made in Maroc Made in Monde, vol. 1. https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers20-12/010080697.pdf
[16] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. (2025) Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025: General Report.
[17] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025.
[18] Aissaoui, ‘Industrialisation et développement : le rôle de l’innovation’.
[19] Catusse, M. (2009) ‘Morocco’s Political Economy’. In L. Guazzone and D. Pioppi (Eds.) The Arab State and Neo-liberal Globalization: The restructuring of state power in the Middle East. Cairo and New York: Ithaca Press, pp. 185–216, https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00553994v1.
[20] Akesbi, N. (2024). The Moroccan Economy Under a Glass Ceiling: From the beginnings to the COVID-19 crisis. (Trans. N. Saoudi). Salé, Morocco: Moroccan Journal of Political and Social Sciences, p. 60.
[21] Foreign capital retained its power within companies despite the process of ‘Moroccanisation’.
[22] Akesbi. The Moroccan Economy under a Glass Ceiling, pp. 69–70.
[23] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025.
[24] Galeano. Open Veins of Latin America, pp. 218-19.
[25] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025.
[26] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025.
[27] Catusse. ‘Morocco’s Political Economy’.
[28] High Commission for Planning. (2016) Study on the Return on Physical Capital in Morocco.https://www.hcp.ma/attachment/2235607/.
[29] Catusse. ‘Morocco’s Political Economy’.
[30] To grasp the scale of the public sector in Morocco, see the Report on Public Establishments and Public Enterprises, included in the Draft Finance Law for 2026, issued by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
[31] Khafaji. National State Capitalism, p. 37.
[32] What is referred to here is not a lack of resource, but rather the state’s unwillingness to task the bourgeoisie and the class of rural notables with industrialising the country.
[33] For further discussion of these strategies, particularly import substitution, see: Galeano. Open Veins of Latin America.
[34] Galeano. Open Veins of Latin America.
[35] Toussaint. The World Bank: A critical history, p. 153.
[36] UNCTAD (2013), Trade and Development Report 2013, New York and Geneva: UNCTAD. https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tdr2013_en.pdf
[37] Kingdom of Morocco, Steering Committee of the Report. Fifty Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025.
[38] The trade openness index is a measure of the relative importance of foreign trade within a country’s overall economy. The global average stands at approximately 56.4%. Values exceeding this benchmark indicate a high degree of trade openness and a strong dependence on the global economy (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia https://www.unescwa.org/ar/sd-glossary/نسبة-الانفتاح-التجاري).
[39] Akesbi. The Moroccan Economy under a Glass Ceiling, p. 219.
[40] Siyada Network (2023). The Challenge of Food Sovereignty: Debt Constraints and Free Trade in Morocco. https://www.siyada.org/akesbi/دراسات-واصدارات/رهان-السيادة-الغذائية/
[41] Paul Pascon. 2008. ‘Implanted Models and the Absence of Renewal’. Almounadil-a press https://web.archive.org/web/20121212015952/http://www.almounadil-a.info/article1432.html
[42] Aziki, O. (21 May 2014). ‘The Impasse of Moroccan Agricultural Exports’. ATTAC Morocco. https://attacmaroc.org/مأزق-الصادرات-الفلاحية-المغربية/
