MEDI1TV Afrique : Le climat économique mondial et son impact sur le Maroc avec Abdelghani Youmni - 25/12/2024
Category
🗞
NewsTranscription
00:00Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to Focus Economique.
00:13The global macroeconomic climate continues to fluctuate.
00:17A global economic uncertainty that we cannot anticipate the trajectory.
00:23Inflation, rise in interest rates, fall in purchasing power, war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East,
00:28the American election with victory of Donald Trump.
00:33How does Morocco place itself in this global economic conjuncture?
00:36What prospects for the economy in 2025?
00:40We are talking about it today with Mr. Abdelrani Youmni.
00:43You are an economist and expert in advertising policies.
00:46It is a pleasure to have you with us.
00:48The pleasure is mine, Madam Prime Minister.
00:50Thank you for the invitation once again.
00:52Always a pleasure to have you.
00:54So we're going to start by talking a little bit about the global economy
00:57before focusing on Morocco and this figure of 3.2% growth in 2025
01:05anticipated by the International Monetary Fund.
01:08An unchanged figure compared to 2024.
01:11So can we talk about a stability of the economy for this year 2025?
01:16Yes, so in your introduction you talked about uncertainty.
01:21So we remain in uncertainty, we navigate not too much abuse.
01:26But there is a change, we are no longer in a geopolitical uncertainty,
01:33we are in an economic uncertainty.
01:36The economy is coming back, especially with the election of Donald Trump in the United States.
01:40So it's not an uncertainty.
01:42Geopolitics disconnected itself from the economy for a reason.
01:47And today we have an economy that is coming back with trade wars, with money wars.
01:55You are right about the 3.2% growth anticipated by the International Monetary Fund,
02:00except that it is very heterogeneous, because we would have to look at the United States.
02:05So they will be at about 3.5%, China around 5% and India is at 10%.
02:17But the European Union is absent from this economic growth
02:20because it records an economic growth of less than 1.2%.
02:24These are the forecasts for 2025.
02:26Projections that could still change?
02:28They may not change much, but not in the positive sense.
02:34In the negative sense, particularly for the European Union and perhaps for China
02:38because of the pressures of the future US administration.
02:42And why does the European Union seem to be in difficulty today?
02:46The European Union seems to be in difficulty because, first of all,
02:50it has not built an economic entity, a defense entity, a social entity, a fiscal entity.
02:58So today the 27 countries are paying the price of their tear-downs
03:03and also of German hegemony, because Germany wanted the euro
03:09and Germany also wanted to be the leadership on the economy.
03:13And also, Germany benefited a lot from its relationship with Russia
03:17on the very low energy costs.
03:20So Germany benefited a lot from the European Union because it imposed its own pace.
03:24And besides, there were several collateral damages in 2008 with the debt crisis.
03:29And today there are collateral damages that are much more powerful, like France.
03:33But Germany is also a collateral damage.
03:35So why the European Union?
03:37So the European Union is aging, the European Union is deindustrializing,
03:41the European Union has delocalized, the European Union has moved defense to the background
03:47and the European Union is accumulating debt.
03:49So all these problems make the European Union more competitive today
03:54and must be reinvented.
03:55This is what Mario Draghi said in his report.
03:58He says that for the European Union, it is catching up with the colossal investments
04:02of China and the United States, which are investing more than 1 billion,
04:06each in the energies of the future,
04:09in the technologies of the future, in artificial intelligence.
04:12And you have to put on the table every year 800 billion euros for 15 years.
04:16We are far from the account for the moment, you said it earlier.
04:20So we are waiting for some figures, a stability in any case of these figures.
04:24They will not go up, but figures that can go down.
04:33So be impacted by, perhaps, you said earlier that the economy…
04:38For China and the European Union, it is possible.
04:40The geopolitics have disconnected, but now…
04:42It's the economy.
04:43As far as everything that happens at the geopolitical level is concerned,
04:46regional armistice in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine that persists,
04:51how can these events impact…
04:53Honestly, they no longer intervene on the economy.
04:55What are the risks?
04:56Here we are back, not only with Donald Trump, but with the evolutions.
05:03I think that the world economy, the WTO and the World Bank
05:06have been very attentive to these changes.
05:10We have closed the geopolitical vein and now we are back to the economy.
05:15And with Donald Trump, it will be more, because the financial markets,
05:19which have been absent for three years since Covid, have awakened.
05:22Financial markets that are very optimistic, indeed.
05:25They are very optimistic in the United States.
05:27There were 1,800 billion dollars that migrated
05:30in the first two weeks of Donald Trump's election
05:33from Europe and Asia to the United States.
05:36Without mentioning cryptocurrencies.
05:38Cryptocurrencies, that's another story.
05:40We don't have the figures because it's an informal market.
05:44But 1,800 billion is huge, which means that the euro has climbed.
05:47And now we are gradually approaching a parity between the euro and the dollar,
05:53with American interest rates that will not go down, but will remain high.
05:56So they will always attract the dollar and attract investors,
06:00because that's how it is.
06:02And then, with the euro depreciating,
06:04the European Bank will have to lower its interest rates to create growth.
06:09This means that by 2025, we will see a lower euro,
06:13a higher dollar, lower financial markets in Europe
06:18and much more powerful financial markets in the United States.
06:21And the financial speculation will come back.
06:24So, for the moment, stable prospects.
06:29Yes, stable, but economic, not geopolitical.
06:32Stable economic prospects.
06:34If we were to talk about Morocco,
06:36how is it positioned today in all this international conjuncture?
06:39How could it be impacted?
06:41Morocco will not be negatively impacted by what is happening,
06:47because Morocco is there, first of all, to talk about the dirama.
06:52The Moroccan currency is anchored in a 60% euro and 40% dollar currency basket.
07:00So the appreciation of the dollar makes a depreciation of the euro.
07:05And so we have imports of raw materials,
07:09the energy bill in dollars, it will be more expensive,
07:11but we have exports of phosphate, so we will recover.
07:16Secondly, at the level of Europe, Europe will be less expensive.
07:20So on our imports, they will be less expensive.
07:24On our exports, they will not bring us back.
07:26So Morocco will be, for the moment,
07:29if the variations of the two currencies are not important.
07:33Secondly, on the energy bill, I told you that geopolitics is moving away.
07:37Inflation too.
07:38The price of oil and gas will not move much,
07:43because we have seen, even with the war, it has not moved.
07:46Cereals have also fallen because Morocco is diversifying.
07:49So, on the other hand, on the crisis of the European Economic Union,
07:53with a weaker growth, we will be impacted.
07:56I remind you, to the people who are watching this show,
08:00that the economic growth of Morocco,
08:02we have a 1.5 points in terms of pluviometry,
08:061 point in Europe, that's 2.5 points,
08:09and then a part of economic activity in Morocco.
08:11So we may lose 0.3 points on Europe.
08:15If we have a weak pluviometric year, we will lose 0.2 points.
08:19So we will be at 2.5 points.
08:21Today, in any case, Banque le Maroc is trading at a 4.5% growth rate.
08:26Yes, I am more on the 4.5% Banque le Maroc than the 4.8% of the government.
08:33So a positive rate, in principle.
08:35Yes, boosted by the construction sites of the World Cup and the Africa Cup.
08:42These are public investments on infrastructures
08:45that will create employment and wealth,
08:47and that will boost growth over the next four years.
08:50There too, we will have a World Cup point over four years.
08:53And as far as inflation is concerned,
08:55we also anticipate an inflation that remains limited to 2%.
08:59You said it earlier, now we are moving away a little bit from inflation.
09:04We will no longer find ourselves in this crisis as we have known it
09:11one or two years ago.
09:12Yes, so there is a glimmer of hope,
09:14and then there is something very positive that has been happening in recent months.
09:18It is the drop in the price of gas and petrol.
09:22This impacts the price and inflation.
09:25And the purchasing power, of course.
09:27In 2022, we were at 18 dirhams, the price of gas and petrol.
09:31Now we are back to much more acceptable figures of 11 dirhams.
09:34This gives the consumer purchasing power.
09:37This makes prices lower for fruits and vegetables and all prices.
09:40It causes the cost of transport to drop.
09:43This will move away a little bit from the cost of living for Moroccan households,
09:49and it will give back a little bit of purchasing power.
09:52In addition to the decisions that have been taken on the PLF25,
09:55well, they are not huge for me.
09:57The increase in income?
09:59Yes, on the slices, on the one point from 38 to 37.
10:03This is a start.
10:05But also the defiscalization of people who earn 6,000 dirhams in income,
10:09who will no longer pay taxes.
10:11I think these are signs of purchasing power.
10:13And I still have, and I find that it is not very negative,
10:17what is being done on public finances.
10:19And they are better off investing in infrastructures
10:23than distributing money with monetary transfers to the population,
10:28because it does not create development.
10:30You said it earlier during this show, several times.
10:33So the economy and politics are dissociated.
10:37And geopolitics.
10:38And geopolitics.
10:39Could we say that the year 2025 is a year of rupture
10:45since the multiple crises that there have been since the pandemic?
10:49Then there were the wars in Ukraine, in the Middle East,
10:52and therefore inflation and all the consequences that it had.
10:55Now, are we heading towards a restart?
10:58A flourishing economy, maybe not in 2025, but later.
11:01You are absolutely right.
11:03So you mentioned two words, the word rupture, the word restart.
11:06Yes, we are going back to the real economy.
11:08And I think that this is Donald Trump's credo.
11:12We are going to the real economy.
11:13Of course, there will be economic wars, fiscal wars,
11:16and money wars between China and the United States and Europe.
11:20But in any case, we are going back to the global level,
11:22to an economy that is disconnected from geopolitics.
11:24And I think we are going to take the first step
11:28on the path of a global economic restart
11:30if the leaders of this world are intelligent.
11:33And Morocco is today, in any case,
11:35in a positive way in this momentum.
11:37Yes, Morocco is in the image of its geographical position.
11:43You see, it is a strategic position
11:47on the geoeconomic level, on the geopolitical level.
11:50Morocco attracts global value chains.
11:53What we still need from Morocco
11:57is to find the recipe to raise our human capital
12:02to be Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore,
12:07the African continent.
12:08If we find this recipe, I think.
12:09But we have all the ingredients today.
12:12Thank you, Mr. Abdelrani Youmni.
12:14I remind you that you are an economist and expert on public policies.
12:18Thank you for all these details.
12:20Thank you for the invitation.
12:21It is a pleasure.
12:22This is the end of Economic Focus for today.
12:25We will meet again tomorrow with a new guest.
12:27Have a very good day.