Morocco’s parliament debates its first post-MINURSO budget as MPs press jobs, aid and anti-graft pledges
The House of Representatives spent Friday debating Part One of the 2027 Finance Bill, with the governing majority hailing the end of the UN mission in the Moroccan Sahara and the opposition demanding proof that the budget’s billions reach households. The government replies on Saturday, when the House votes on Part One.
Key points
- The House of Representatives debated Part One of the 2027 Finance Bill (Bill No. 60.26) in plenary on Friday 13 November 2026. 1
- The government replies on Saturday 14 November at 09:00, and the House then votes on Part One. Le360 (with MAP)
- The Finance Committee accepted 59 of the 287 amendments tabled to Part One; the opposition won 16 of its 214. 2
- The government projects 3.7% growth in 2027, a budget deficit of 3% of GDP and inflation of 1.5%. 2
- The employment programme targets one million young Moroccans in work by 2031, including a First Employment Contract for 500,000 of them. 1
Three readings of the same result
Same facts, different frames. Each reading names its outlets and what it emphasizes.
Washington and Paris read the week through the Council vote.
The United States drafted the resolution that would have renamed the mission, dropping the word referendum, and made Morocco’s autonomy plan the only basis for talks; France and Britain backed it, and Russia’s veto blocked it.
Key detail The Carnegie Endowment’s reading is the sober one: nothing was decided by the failure to renew the mission, and the file now moves to negotiation…
Beijing and Moscow read the deadlock as proof that the Council cannot settle the file on its own.
China abstained on the American draft and voted for the Russian text that would have rolled the mission over unchanged; Russia’s mission in New York said afterwards that any text must reflect the positions of both parties, and defended the veto as a corrective where dialogue had been exhausted.
Key detail Chinese state media reported the failure to renew in flat, factual terms.
In Rabat, the week is a watershed; across Africa, it is a test of delivery.
The parliamentary majority hailed the end of a mission created in 1991 to organise a referendum that never took place, and presented the autonomy framework as the path forward, with African backing already recorded at the United Nations.
Key detail The debate itself is the other half of the story: a parliament arguing in public over registry thresholds, fuel taxes, doctors’ departures and the price…
Sources by lens: 2 West, 1 East, 8 Global South. See every source
The story
What did the House debate on Friday, and what happens on Saturday?
Morocco’s House of Representatives spent Friday debating Part One of the 2027 Finance Bill, Bill No. 60.26, in two plenary sessions that opened at 09:30 and 14:00 in Rabat. It is the first budget debate of the government led by Head of Government Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, and the first since the United Nations mission in the Moroccan Sahara came to an end. Group leaders spoke in turn through the day: El Hassan Lachgar for the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, Chaoui Belassal for the Constitutional Democratic and Social group, Ahmed El Abbadi for the Party of Progress and Socialism, Nabila Mounib for the Left Alliance, Idriss El Azami El Idrissi for the Justice and Development Party, Hicham El Mhajri for the Authenticity and Modernity Party, and Rim Chabat for the Haraki group. The House reconvenes on Saturday at 09:00 for the government’s reply, delivered by Minister Delegate for the Budget Fouzi Lekjaa, followed immediately by the vote on Part One. The permanent committees will then vote on the sectoral budgets before the plenary debates Part Two and votes on the bill as a whole.
What do the committee record and the budget numbers actually show?
The committee stage was long and contested. The Finance and Economic Development Committee examined the bill for 55 hours and 25 minutes across 11 meetings over eight working days, and accepted 59 of the 287 amendments tabled to Part One. The government won all 11 of its own amendments; the majority groups saw 33 of their 42 accepted; the opposition won 16 of its 214. The government’s macroeconomic framework projects growth of 3.7 percent in 2027, a budget deficit of 3 percent of GDP and inflation of 1.5 percent. The social package at the heart of the bill is worth 62 billion dirhams. The employment programme targets the integration of one million young Moroccans into work by 2031, with rapid training or a job within six months for school dropouts and a First Employment Contract scheme for 500,000 young people. The bill sets aside 45.4 billion dirhams for health and social protection, creating 8,000 new medical posts, and 111.3 billion dirhams for national education, with public investment held at 400 billion dirhams. The corporate tax rate on major fuel companies rises from 35 to 40 percent. The same week brought two companion decisions: the Council of Government suspended new food export permits and raised the minimum direct social aid payment from 500 to 600 dirhams a month from 1 January 2027, and Morocco signed a 434.4-million-euro financing agreement with the African Development Bank in Rabat on Friday. When the bill was presented in October, it promised an income-tax exemption for salaries under 10,000 dirhams a month and a minimum pension of 1,700 dirhams.
What is still undecided before Saturday’s vote?
Almost everything that would turn Friday’s debate into law. Part One has not been voted on: the majority is expected to carry it on Saturday, but the government’s reply may still concede ground, and no vote count can be stated before it happens. It is not known whether any of the 68 amendments tabled by the Left Alliance, including a wealth tax on non-productive assets above 20 million dirhams and a revision of Article 19 of the General Tax Code, will survive into the voted text. It is not known whether the overhaul of the Unified Social Registry scoring threshold that two group leaders demanded will happen, what it would cost, or how fast the move toward actual household income verification could come. The fate of the shuttered SAMIR oil refinery in Mohammedia remains open, as does the fiscal cost of the tax exemptions granted for the 2030 World Cup, for which the Finance Ministry has published no detailed estimate. And the Speaker’s invocation of Article 390 after a lawmaker raised a suitcase inside the chamber leaves a disciplinary question for the Ethics Committee.
Why does this budget carry more weight than a routine finance bill?
Because it is the first budget of a new government, debated days into a new diplomatic era. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri leads the first government of her tenure as the first woman to hold the post in Morocco’s history, and her coalition’s first fiscal blueprint arrives two weeks after the United Nations mission in the Moroccan Sahara ended without renewal. The governing majority has made the connection explicit: the parliamentary leaders who spoke on Friday presented the end of the 35-year mission as a historic watershed, and the budget as the domestic half of the same national moment. That framing raises the stakes of the numbers. A budget that promises one million jobs by 2031, a reformed social registry and 62 billion dirhams for purchasing power and social services will be judged on whether households feel any of it; while more than 700 doctors a year leave for Europe, while rigid registry formulas exclude low-income families, and while the opposition argues that record public investment sits beside modest growth and high youth unemployment. The deficit, held at 3 percent of GDP, is the government’s answer to the charge of indiscipline; the 400 billion dirhams of public investment is its answer to the charge of timidity.
What is the real question the El Mansouri government has to answer?
It is whether a diplomatic high can be converted into domestic delivery. The budget’s arithmetic is disciplined, and the majority can point to a real record: a deficit held at 3 percent, an African Development Bank agreement worth 434.4 million euros, and a social package larger than any in recent memory. But the opposition’s charge is structural, not arithmetic. Public-sector bank credit rose 67 percent between 2019 and 2025 while private-sector credit rose 44 percent, and the Justice and Development Party argues that Treasury borrowing is crowding out the small businesses the budget claims to help. Private clinics absorb more than 90 percent of health insurance reimbursements, while hospitals lose doctors. The majority’s answer is implementation: faster procurement payments, fairer access to public land and credit, and two flagship bills; one criminalising illicit enrichment, another creating a State Litigation Agency to safeguard public funds. The test of the budget is whether those mechanisms move faster than the complaints. The United Nations General Assembly’s backing for the autonomy plan gives the government diplomatic cover; it does not pay a single household bill.
What happens next if the money does not reach households?
The second-order effects run in several directions at once. A social registry that keeps excluding deserving families would corrode trust in the social state faster than any single budget line can rebuild it; a registry that starts verifying actual household income would do the opposite. The fuel tax rise, from 35 to 40 percent on the major distributors, will be judged at the pump, and the government will be pressed for the price stabilisation mechanisms the majority itself demanded. The World Cup exemptions, still uncosted, will face the same scrutiny the moment the Finance Ministry publishes a figure. The SAMIR question touches energy sovereignty, and the Southern Provinces infrastructure programme, which the majority wants accelerated, turns development into the concrete form of the autonomy argument. And the African Development Bank programme ties the reform money to private-sector investment, so a slowdown in business creation would show up in the next agreement as surely as in the next debate.
What should readers watch over the next 48 hours?
Three things, in order. First, Saturday at 09:00: the government’s reply, delivered by Minister Delegate for the Budget Fouzi Lekjaa, and the vote on Part One that follows it; the first hard number of the weekend. Second, the sectoral budgets in the permanent committees, where the promises on health, education and the social registry meet their line items, and where the wealth-tax amendments will live or die. Third, Part Two of the bill, and the final vote on the whole text, which will show whether the majority holds under opposition pressure. Beyond the chamber, watch the registry: any new scoring threshold, or a timetable for income verification, will matter more to low-income families than any speech. And watch the follow-up to the 10 November General Assembly discussion, where the post-MINURSO picture takes its next institutional shape.
What we agree on, and what remains open
Established
- The House of Representatives debated Part One of the 2027 Finance Bill in plenary on Friday 13 November.
- The government replies on Saturday 14 November at 09:00 and the House then votes on Part One.
- MINURSO’s mandate expired on 31 October after the Security Council failed on 30 October to adopt either draft resolution before it.
Contested
- On whether the budget answers the squeeze on household purchasing power or papers over it; and on whether the end of MINURSO closes the Sahara file or leaves the underlying dispute to be settled by negotiation.
Still open
- Whether Part One passes on Saturday as drafted.
- What the social registry reform will cost or cover.
- Or what the tax exemptions for the 2030 World Cup will cost the Treasury.
What to watch
Questions, answered
Bill No. 60.26 is the Moroccan government’s spending and tax plan for 2027. Part One sets the macroeconomic framework and the revenue measures, including tax changes, while Part Two covers the sectoral budgets of each ministry. The bill was referred to Parliament on 20 October, examined in committee, and debated in plenary on 13 and 14 November before a final vote on the whole text.
MINURSO is the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, created by Security Council Resolution 690 in 1991 to monitor a ceasefire and prepare a self-determination referendum that never took place. Its mandate expired on 31 October 2026 after the Council failed on 30 October to adopt either an American draft or a Russian counter-draft, and liquidation began on 1 November.
The bill carries a 62-billion-dirham social package. The minimum direct social aid payment rises from 500 to 600 dirhams a month from 1 January 2027, salaries under 10,000 dirhams a month are exempt from income tax, and the minimum pension rises to 1,700 dirhams. A First Employment Contract scheme covers 500,000 young people on the way to one million youth jobs by 2031.
The House votes on Part One on Saturday 14 November, after the government’s reply. The permanent committees then vote on the sectoral budgets, the plenary debates Part Two, and the House votes on the bill as a whole. The measures take effect from 1 January 2027, including the higher social aid payment and the income-tax exemption.