Morocco achieves good results in its fight against poverty

Moroccan Interior Ministry Delegate Charki Draiss said on Wednesday that 10 million Moroccans have benefited from Morocco’s National Initiative of Human Development (INDH), Anadolu reported.

In his speech during an international conference in Rabat about public policies to fight poverty, the minister said that the programme’s 10-year duration is divided into three stages at the cost of 37.4 billion Moroccan dirhams ($3.8bn) and includes 42,000 projects.

Morocco is planning to launch the third stage of the INDH while talks with the International Bank to support this stage are underway.

While speaking in the Rabat conference, the representative of the International Bank Michel Hamad said it had paid $100 million in support of the first stage of the INDH and given a $300 million loan in support of the second stage.

He added that the previous two stages brought Morocco to number three among the 135 most important world social development programmes according to the 2015 report of the World Bank.

Meanwhile, the head of the economic and social council said in the same conference that poverty in the country retreated from 15 per cent in 2004 to 4.4 per cent in 2014.

Morocco launched the first stage of the INDH between 2005 and 2010, the second between 2011 and 2015 and is planning to launch the third stage.

Morocco received the FAO’s distinction for reaching the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of cutting extreme poverty and hunger two years ahead of schedule.