Morocco is a sweet-toothed country. If you do not take the precaution of ordering mint or peppermint tea with little sugar, the bees soon begin to buzz over the glass like in the display cases of confectioneries, where delicate chebaquía pastries, fried with syrup, or gazelle horns, of cinnamon and orange blossom water tempt the senses. Each Moroccan consumes 36 kilos of sugar annually, 44% more than half a century ago and four times above the recommendation of the World Health Organization. Not only does it sweeten infusions and desserts, in the Maghreb country it is also found in bread, processed meats, canned legumes… in a wide range of products processed by the agri-food industry, reveals an investigation by the weekly Tel Quel.
As with other essential foods, such as bread, the State subsidizes sugar to make it accessible to the most disadvantaged classes, with a price that is below 10 dirhams (0.9 euros) per kilo. In the 2024 General Budgets, Morocco has allocated nearly 4,000 million dirhams (370 million euros) to control its price in the local market. A quarter of the amount goes to the coffers of the agri-food industry, which benefits from a subsidized product.
Paradoxically, the Moroccan Government introduced a tax on sweetened soft drinks starting in 2018 and from 2022 it taxes food products with excess sweetness, such as pasta, chocolates or jams. The treasury collects about 65 million euros from these taxes each year, below the 93 million with which it indirectly subsidizes companies that benefit from controlled prices. In parallel, it has also raised the VAT on sugar from 7% to 8% this year.
The drought that has hit Morocco in recent years has affected the national production of sugar cane and sugar beets, which covered about half of the 1.2 million tons consumed annually in the country. The drop in production has forced an increase in imports, which now account for 80% of domestic consumption, at a bullish moment in international markets.
The cost of obesity
The Working Group on Obesity in Morocco, which includes parliamentarians, experts and representatives of civil society, warns that fatness has a much higher cost for the North African country’s economy, which it estimates at up to 24 billion dirhams per year. year in research published by Tel Quel. The medical and social expenses incurred—in a country of 38 million inhabitants—by 20% of obese people (double the number 25 years ago) and another 33% overweight are reflected in the presence of 2.4 million diabetics ( 6.5% of the population). The Moroccan League to Fight Diabetes warns of the high economic impact that this disease has on the national health system covered by the expanded mandatory health insurance, which has tripled its number of beneficiaries to reach 23 million members this year. Diabetes accounts for 17.2% of spending on chronic diseases, which account for half of the system’s payments.
Faced with calls from experts to effectively implement the reimbursement of subsidies received by the agri-food industry with excess sugar in their processed products, no Rabat government, neither Islamist nor secular, has dared to take the step in the last years. Nor to eliminate generous subsidies, as has been done, for example, with gasoline or butane. It is not unusual that in the more than 200,000 cafes that line the streets of the country, when the waiter serves a cup accompanied by a couple of sachets or four cubes of sugar, the customer asks for some more to sweeten the drink to their liking. It will be bitter for Morocco to cut the tradition of high consumption of sweets that is at the essence of religious celebrations such as those of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The State, meanwhile, continues to finance an industry that fattens food with modified glucose, despite its exorbitant health and economic cost.
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