Morocco’s Car Rental Industry Faces Crisis as Vehicle Thefts Surge

"We are experiencing a real crisis in the car rental sector due to the repeated thefts our vehicles are facing," says the owner of a car rental agency. According to him, the problem is no longer limited to isolated cases, but has become a phenomenon that threatens the continuity of their activity. According to his explanations, many customers exploit legal loopholes and sometimes use false identities to rent cars, which the agencies never see again. To solve this problem, he says he has been forced to take stricter measures, such as requiring more substantial financial guarantees and carrying out a thorough check of customers. "But this has a negative impact on our business and reduces customer confidence," he points out.

Faced with this persistent crisis, the Federation of Car Rental Agency Associations has issued an urgent call to the Director General of National Security, Abdelatif Hammouchi. It is asking him to strengthen security and technical efforts to accurately verify the authenticity of tenants’ identity documents, in order to fight against the growing fraud and thefts that threaten the viability of the sector.

It also calls for the activation of additional security measures, such as the intensification of electronic surveillance and the strengthening of communication between car rental agencies and security authorities, which will contribute to increasing the level of protection and improving the ability of law enforcement to detect and deter crimes before they occur, as well as the acceleration of the implementation of the necessary technical solutions to verify the authenticity of customers’ documents.