REUTERS, Rabat | Tuesday
MOROCCO’S trade deficit for the first half of this year surged 39.8% to 22.66bn dirhams due mainly to a higher crude oil imports bill.
The state foreign trade regulatory Office de Changes said in a report that imports rose 14.8% at the end of June to 60.11bn dirhams while exports edged up 3.5% to 37.44bn dirhams.
“The rise in imports is attributable by 61.1% or 4.72bn dirhams to crude oil imports,” it said.
The office said that crude oil imports bill rocketed 151.3% to 7.85bn dirhams from 3.12bn dirhams a year earlier.
It said that the volume of crude oil imported rose 10.2% to 3.86 million tonnes against 3.5 million tonnes in the January-June period of last year.
Morocco imports around 8.0 million tonnes of crude oil each year mainly from the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.
Imports should be drastically reduced due to the recent discovery in the North African country of reserves of 2.0 billion barrels of oil equivalent with more hydrocarbon discoveries expected in other areas, officials said.
Non-oil imports rose 6.1% to 52.26 billion dirhams, including cereals imports which rose 25.4%, sugar imports up 48.1% and chemical products up 6.4%.
The European Union is Morocco’s main trading partner accounting for almost two-thirds of the total volume of trade.