It accelerated in the fourth quarter to reach +3.3%, after +2.8% in the third quarter. Morocco is ending the year 2023 on a positive note. This is what emerges from the economic update from the High Commission for Planning (HCP) for the fourth quarter of 2023. The HCP also gives its outlook for the first quarter of 2024. The details. Economic growth would have accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2023, reaching +3.3%, after +2.8% in the third quarter. This performance would have been based mainly on the resilience of secondary branches in the face of an unfavorable international situation and on the continuous improvement of services. In the first quarter of 2024, national economic growth should stand at +2.4%, driven mainly by the dynamics of the extractive and chemical industries and the strengthening of non-market services. The volume of national exports and imports of goods and services would have shown respective increases of 15.5 and 15.2% in annual variations, in the fourth quarter of 2023, instead of +8.1 and +9.3% a quarter earlier. Gradual recovery in domestic demand Domestic demand has regained momentum since the third quarter of 2023, after having declined by 0.1% on average during the first two quarters of the year. This reversal of trend would have been driven by the dynamics of investment. In annual variation, the growth of the FBC would have stood at 12.8%, at the cost of strong sectoral disparities. The improvement in investment in manufactured products, against a backdrop of an increase in external demand for automotive and electrical and electronic products, would have contrasted with the deceleration of investment in services, particularly in IT products and in real estate. Overall inflation is falling but is struggling to return to its pre-2022 level. Inflation appears to have fallen again in the fourth quarter of 2023, continuing its uninterrupted deceleration process for three quarters. The annual progression of the consumer price index would have slowed down, reaching +3.9%, after +4.9% in the third quarter and +6.8% in the second. This limited decline would have resulted from a less sustained increase in the prices of food products, standing at +8.1% year-on-year, after having reached +10.7% in the third quarter and from an evolution in the prices of non-food products at the same rate of the previous quarter, i.e. +1%, year-on-year. 2024 Outlook The global economic outlook for the first quarter of 2024 remains subject to persistent risks linked to developments in the geopolitical situation, particularly in the Middle East and Ukraine, and to the vagaries of climate change, maintaining uncertainties around growth in activity and accentuating volatility in raw materials markets. The tightening of monetary policies, initiated since the beginning of 2022 in most advanced countries, could, however, ease, in a context of falling inflation. Following the same trajectory, national economic growth would moderate in the first quarter of 2024. The recovery that began at the end of 2023 would have encountered the return of the autumn drought. The start of the 2023/24 agricultural campaign was characterized by a significant delay in the establishment of early crops. Excluding agriculture, growth should continue at a rate of 2.9%, driven by the continued progression of activities in secondary sectors, notably the chemical industries, the manufacturing of transport equipment and the automobile industry.
source: dhui.ma
