The price of school notebooks soars
If official schoolbooks will benefit from a subsidy in order to prevent its increase, school notebooks will undoubtedly cost more at the start of the 2022-2023 school year. “The 24-page notebooks, for example, which were sold at 1.50 MAD apiece, will now be offered at 3 MAD apiece. The price of the 96-page one will go from 3 MAD to 6 MAD. The 384-page notebook whose price was 15 MAD will jump to 23 MAD. The increase is explained by the soaring price of paper and transport”, explains Mohamed Barni, bookseller in the city of Salé and member of the Moroccan Association of Booksellers. Asked by L’Economiste, Tariq Lallouch, president of the Moroccan Group of Printers (GMI), confirms “the soaring prices, given the price of paper, especially since the price of the notebook is free”. The increase is not limited only to notebooks, but also extends to other supplies such as binders, whether locally manufactured or imported, the prices of which sometimes range from simple to double.
To mitigate the impact of these increases, the government plans to allocate a subsidy to publishers with the aim of preventing the increase in the price of official schoolbooks. This announcement generates an outcry from the other component of the publishing ecosystem, namely booksellers. Their association, chaired by the newly elected Samira Chair has just officially expressed its outcry about “this decision which is sowing confusion in the minds of parents”. “The government statement remains ambiguous and could suggest that all schoolbooks will be subsidized, including those imported. This could result in quarrels with customers”, underlines the bookseller.
The press release dated Monday, August 29 speaks of “increases in imported schoolbooks varying among certain importers between 5 and 25%”. The increases do take place at each start of the school year due to the lack of regulation of imported books. These are not the only sources of concern for booksellers. The distribution of certain schoolbooks should be delayed this year a few days before the start of the school year classes, according to the association.
The association’s statement indicates that the volume of books distributed so far does not cover the needs of some 3.6 million students targeted by the operation. To remedy this situation, it is proposed to market substitute books. In addition to the delay in the distribution of some textbooks, attributed to negotiations between publishers and the Government, the booksellers complain about “the reduction in the profit margin that was diminished from 20% to 10%, the difference being promised by certain publishers after the payment of the subsidy promised by the government”. The sale of textbooks by some private schools continues to cause the anger of booksellers who believe that it is a “usurpation of function”. The association therefore calls for the prohibition via a ministerial decree of the sale of textbooks by private schools, something that had already been promised to them by Saïd Amzazi, former Minister of Education, but which ultimately did not come into being.
Hassan EL ARIF
