Rabat - Moroccan government employees earn on average three times the GDP per capita, and yet they haven’t improved the citizen’s perception of the public administration. Court of Auditors calls for a profound reform limiting the recruitment and promotion of staff.

Rabat – Moroccan government employees earn on average three times the GDP per capita, and yet they haven’t improved the citizen’s perception of the public administration. Court of Auditors calls for a profound reform limiting the recruitment and promotion of staff.

According to a report published Monday by the Court of Auditors, the MAD 120 billion payroll that employs 860,253 public administration workers, cost 11.34 percent of the country’s GDP. Between 2008 and 2016, the total payroll grew by an average of 5.3 percent yearly, whereas the country’s GDP did not exceed 3.92 percent in growth.

“This means that the compensations served to the officials grow faster than the GDP,” the Court of Auditors wrote. In addition, the payroll grew by 59.6 percent in 8 years, while the number of government employees increased by just 9 percent.

Concentration and regional disparity

82.5 percent of the government employees work in one of the four departments: the education sector (49.4 percent), the Ministry of Interior (20.5 percent), the Ministry of Health (8.4 percent) or higher education (4.2 percent).

According to the report, 17.2 out of every 1,000 citizens work for the government. While this rate is relatively low in the MENA region, some parts of Morocco, like Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra and Rabat-Salé-Kenitra, employ up to 37.7 and 27.8 per thousand as government workers and employees respectively.

Pressing need for a profound reform

The continuous increase in the payroll is a direct result of staff promotions to higher grades. The Court of Auditors also put blame on the numerous decisions to raise the salaries that came in response to what the report called “exceptional circumstances.” In 2015 for instance, the promotion of the government staff cost the state MAD 3.65 million.

The Court of Auditors called for limiting the hiring to the strict minimum and only when faced with a pressing need, and to redeploy the human resources where they are most needed. In addition, the measures taken against absenteeism should be limited to extreme cases. For the Court, the management needs to increase the workload in order to narrow the need for more recruitment.