Moroccan Cafes Face Backlash Over Post-Ramadan Price Hikes

Tea is expensive in the cafes of the city of Tangier. This is the observation made by the site Al3omk which specifies that the price of coffee has increased by two to three dirhams, while that of other drinks has experienced an increase of one or two dirhams on the second day of Eid al-Fitr. At the origin of this surge, the imposition by coffee companies and soft drink distributors of a new price increase on their products, explains the national coordinator of the National Association of Cafe and Restaurant Owners in Morocco. Taken by surprise by this decision, many customers call on the authorities responsible for the sector to intervene urgently to put an end to these increases which they consider unjustified.

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The National Federation of Cafe and Restaurant Owners has also deplored the fact that the steps taken towards the supervisory authority to save their sector, which has been seriously tested, have not been fruitful so far. Based on the field study it conducted, which resulted in alarming results and figures concerning the number of closures in the cafe and restaurant sector in Morocco, the association says it has addressed a request for an audience to the Minister of Economy on January 29, 2024, but this correspondence has remained a dead letter like the previous ones.

The wish of cafe and restaurant owners is that the Minister of the Interior promulgate a framework law, cap collective taxes, in order to reduce what they describe as "subjectivity and arbitrariness of certain local authority officials". They call for the adoption of concrete measures to reduce the spread of the informal sector in the kingdom.