Morocco ranked 97th in the world in the Index of Economic Freedom for the year 2023, announced by the American “Heritage” Foundation for research on economics and public policy, with a total score of 58.4 points this year.
According to the American report, Morocco ranked first in the North African region, followed by Tunisia at 132nd in the world, and Egypt at 151st in the world. Algeria was ranked 168th in the world. However, the report did not mention any official data on Mauritania and Libya.
In this report, the document indicated that Morocco has fallen from the previous rating by less than a degree (0.8 points), however, it was able to rank seventh out of 14 countries included in the ranking in the Middle East and North Africa region, bringing its overall score close to the global average.
The research team that supervised the report stated that the gradual and remarkable progress made by Morocco in the classification is due to the economic reforms undertaken by the Kingdom. This encouraged the dynamism of the private sector in particular, pointing to the improvement in competitiveness and the diversification of the productive base in Morocco.
In this context, the international report indicated that external challenges require Morocco to adopt deep institutional reforms, criticizing the inflexibility of the country’s labor market, especially with regard to the lack of structure of many economic sectors, and therefore they remain not included in the formal economic fabric.
Morocco received varying scores in several sub-indicators, including the rule of law index, which includes criteria such as the standard of intellectual property protection, where it scored 57.1 points. The judicial effectiveness index scored 32.8 points, and the government integrity standard scored 38.7 points.
The second sub-indicator pertains to organizational efficiency, which comprises the standard of ease of doing business, where Morocco received 65.3 points, the standard of freedom of action, where it received 47.6 points, and the standard of monetary freedom, where it received 78.3 points.
The third index is related to market openness and evaluates the standard of freedom of trade, for which Morocco received 64.4 points. Additionally, it received 65 points for investment freedom and 70 points for financial freedom.