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New York* / Morocco Board News*** When the political parties in Morocco devise policies, they do sketch some feeble argument, it is so diluted that if it ever was put into practice, they wouldn’t know where to start first. On the other hand, policy-makers in Morocco lead the charge with formidable support from McKinsey-style consultancy firms. The trouble is, a country like Morocco cannot be run like a corporation. And even if it is so in the minds of the young fellows running the show, the corporation is certainly not run in the best interest of its shareholders, but for the board’s benefit.
*Policy and social engineering are worked out under the assumption that the objective is to maximize the country’s welfare. There remains a great deal of blur in defining what one might mean by that word: “welfare“. In fiscal matters, it may come to the idea of taxing individuals and companies more than others, while in social policy, it also means helping some social classes more than others. There’s also a great deal of ideology in policy-making, even among the high-brow circles of consultants: under the veneer of technocracy, there’s a political motivation behind strategic thinking like the ‘Plan Maroc Vert‘, ‘Halieutis‘*and the*INDH*or indeed anything of the sort like the high-speed TGV*network.
Perhaps I am over-rating the Palace Cabinet ’s task force. A question that I often asked myself: how are decisions taken up there? Whether on economic policy, or on-the-spot crisis decisions* like the*Aminatou Haidar*case, or the* protest camps in*Agdim Izik, how are decisions taken? Do they meet in a war-room, delineating scenarii, then discussing the likelihood of each one until they reach the best decision?* So it must be that the Royal Cabinet has some kind of modus operandi, I assume to be ultra-rational (given the high proportion of* engineering graduates from the French Grandes-Ecoles). And yet, my impression is that there is little competency at work. Allow me to expatiate; and*ad absurdo*reasoning would be best. Let’s consider the ONA-SNI case: if the firm is really set on pulling the country out of poverty and into prosperity, how come its dividend policy never shows it?
There is, among other things, a consensus that the private business of the king can pull the economy upward. The idea is that we need the Moroccan equivalent of*Chaebol, the Korean conglomerate of Banks and Industries that played significant part in making South Korea what it is today: a first-class country that is now considered to be member of the G20 club, when, 50 years ago, its GDP per capita was lower than Morocco’s,*and the best thing they could have ever manufactured at the time was T-shirts. The idea was therefore to imitate, as it were, the Korean experience with companies like*SNI-ONA, or indeed*Attijari Wafabank*and other economic "national champions". The economic model sounds good: at the price of domestic monopoly, Morocco fields a first-class holding able to operate on global markets with the required size to win us some surplus that would be redistributed. In other words, the private monopoly captures the common surplus in order to expand, and then redistribute it through pay rise or investment in intangible assets. This is the semi-official line.
*Policy and social engineering are worked out under the assumption that the objective is to maximize the country’s welfare. There remains a great deal of blur in defining what one might mean by that word: “welfare“. In fiscal matters, it may come to the idea of taxing individuals and companies more than others, while in social policy, it also means helping some social classes more than others. There’s also a great deal of ideology in policy-making, even among the high-brow circles of consultants: under the veneer of technocracy, there’s a political motivation behind strategic thinking like the ‘Plan Maroc Vert‘, ‘Halieutis‘*and the*INDH*or indeed anything of the sort like the high-speed TGV*network.
Perhaps I am over-rating the Palace Cabinet ’s task force. A question that I often asked myself: how are decisions taken up there? Whether on economic policy, or on-the-spot crisis decisions* like the*Aminatou Haidar*case, or the* protest camps in*Agdim Izik, how are decisions taken? Do they meet in a war-room, delineating scenarii, then discussing the likelihood of each one until they reach the best decision?* So it must be that the Royal Cabinet has some kind of modus operandi, I assume to be ultra-rational (given the high proportion of* engineering graduates from the French Grandes-Ecoles). And yet, my impression is that there is little competency at work. Allow me to expatiate; and*ad absurdo*reasoning would be best. Let’s consider the ONA-SNI case: if the firm is really set on pulling the country out of poverty and into prosperity, how come its dividend policy never shows it?
There is, among other things, a consensus that the private business of the king can pull the economy upward. The idea is that we need the Moroccan equivalent of*Chaebol, the Korean conglomerate of Banks and Industries that played significant part in making South Korea what it is today: a first-class country that is now considered to be member of the G20 club, when, 50 years ago, its GDP per capita was lower than Morocco’s,*and the best thing they could have ever manufactured at the time was T-shirts. The idea was therefore to imitate, as it were, the Korean experience with companies like*SNI-ONA, or indeed*Attijari Wafabank*and other economic "national champions". The economic model sounds good: at the price of domestic monopoly, Morocco fields a first-class holding able to operate on global markets with the required size to win us some surplus that would be redistributed. In other words, the private monopoly captures the common surplus in order to expand, and then redistribute it through pay rise or investment in intangible assets. This is the semi-official line.
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