Morocco’s Cafes and Restaurants Face Crisis as Tax Burdens Threaten Closures

Cafe and restaurant owners are at the end of their rope. The National Association of Cafe and Restaurant Owners and Tourist Units of Morocco is calling on the Ministry of the Interior for urgent intervention to "stop the hemorrhage of closures that this sector is experiencing following the entry into force of increases in tax levies on beverages and the temporary use of public space." Some managers have been forced to close their businesses. "20% of cafe and restaurant owners have been forced to close because they were unable to pay the debts that accumulated during the Covid-19 period, to which the new rates of taxes and fees imposed by certain municipalities have been added," Nourredine El Harrak, the president of the Association, told Le Matin.

"The sector is currently on the brink of the abyss and many entities risk going bankrupt if the Ministry of the Interior does not intervene to cap the taxes and fees whose amounts are currently subject to the discretion of each municipality," he said. To support his argument, El Harrak cites the sharp increases in urban taxes adopted by certain local authorities, particularly the municipality of Rabat and that of Casablanca. "I’ll give you an example, the municipality of Rabat has set the urban taxes related to chairs and tables at 80 DH per square meter per quarter, while the tax for temporary use of public space has gone from 70 DH/m² to 525 DH/m² in neighborhoods like Hay Riad and Souissi and 325 DH/m² in the Agdal neighborhood. Knowing that these increases do not respond to any logic and risk causing the bankruptcy of many businesses."