Al Haouz earthquake: Impact estimated at 3.5% of GDP
Reconstruction of housing and basic infrastructure (schools and primary health care facilities) is progressing apace in the regions hit by the Al Haouz earthquake. In anticipation of the completion of the project, scheduled for December 31 2025, when all inhabitants should in principle be rehoused, the first figures on the implementation of the government’s emergency assistance program for the population have begun to come in.
Based on an assessment carried out by the Treasury and External Finance Department of the Ministry of Finance, they show that emergency expenditure on managing the damage caused by the earthquake has fallen well short of forecasts.
Expenditure well below forecasts
In fact, as revealed by the AfDB, which relayed the information, the impact on GDP ($148.6 billion in 2024, up 2.9%) was ultimately only 3.5%, far from the 8% the Government was counting on. This situation was made possible by this year’s increase in tourism receipts, and growing remittances from the Moroccan diaspora abroad, it is explained. While we await the exact figures, these two sources of revenue for the budget have been on an upward trend since last January. By the end of October 2024, tourism receipts had reached 96.9 billion Dirhams (USD 9.69 billion), compared with 88.6 billion Dirhams (USD 8.86 billion) for the same period in 2023, an increase of 9.3%. Remittances from Moroccans living abroad came close to the 92 billion Dirham (USD 9.2 billion) mark at the end of September 2024, up 5.2% on the same period last year.
In the field, too, the emergency assistance program for victims exceeded expectations. In the 15 days following the earthquake, 28 field hospitals were set up in the region, compared with the two planned, an increase of 1,400%. And over 500 ambulances were made available, with a total of 1,268 doctors and 1,733 nurses. The number of medicine kits distributed reached around 50,000 (over 800 tons of medicine transported to the disaster area), i.e. 500% of the planned figure.
A.D.
