Morocco’s Social Security System Falls Short, CESE Urges Reforms to Unemployment Benefits

In its report on improving social security in Morocco, the institution found that the current unemployment compensation does not benefit the target people due to the non-compliance of their files and also because it does not serve the middle class who find themselves in a situation of severe precariousness.

To this end, it made proposals for the improvement of the law on social protection, advocating the establishment of an "unemployment compensation system, including an insurance scheme and an assistance scheme, linked to an active device to help return to employment". This proposal should make it possible to help salaried workers receive more substantial benefits than the minimum wage and also help non-salaried workers through an assistance scheme.

On the other hand, points out the Council, the government’s reform maintains a minimum of 780 days of work in the 36 months preceding the loss of employment and removes the additional condition of 260 days of declaration in the last 12 months. This in order to increase the number of beneficiaries. Yet, according to the statistics, the declared days worked before losing a job in Morocco (private sector) are a minimum of 211 days and a maximum of 220 days.

Likewise, a significant portion of workers and those who contribute the most are the most disadvantaged and find themselves in a precarious situation. The "capping at 70% of the reference salary without exceeding the SMIG [...] keeps employees and executives in a situation of very high vulnerability," the report warns.

To remedy this, the CESE recommends a structural and progressive overhaul of the IPE towards a real unemployment compensation system that would be a "partial replacement and support income in returning to activity", by modifying several parameters, and this should prove very interesting for the State if it had to face a new health crisis or an economic crisis.

This necessarily involves increasing the ceiling of the allowance by bringing it to a multiple of the SMIG at least 4 to 5 times the SMIG, and increasing the contribution rate which is not high enough, in particular by making adjustments without necessarily having to make this increase suffer employees or employers, it is noted in the report.