Moroccan Special Marketing, Human Resources and Finance/Accounting Issues
From International Business Wiki
Income Distribution and Poverty
Morocco is not a very wealthy country and their poverty continues to get worse but even more surprising is the uneven income distribution throughout the country. About nineteen percent of Moroccans were living in poverty by the year 2000. One cause of this is due to their environment; Morocco is susceptible to droughts and because forty percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture, these droughts are absolutely devastating towards their economy. This is why a staggering seventy-two percent of the poor in Morocco live in rural areas (http://www.worldbank.org/mdf/mdf1/menapoor.htm). There have been many programs installed to alleviate this problem, such as the National Program on Sustainable Human Development and Poverty Eradication in Rural Areas. The government has also been helping out towards this problem to encourage growth and increase human capital but poverty still persists. Another source of income the country brings in is through tourism. More than one-and-a-half a million tourists go to Morocco each year (http://www.newint.org/issue259/profile.htm). As a whole Morocco only maintains $4,100 GDP per capita (US GDP per capita = $43,500). While Morocco’s overall income is very low compared to other countries and they’re poverty continues to grow, there are the few Moroccan’s who enjoy large amounts of wealth and power. The wealthiest 20 percent of Moroccans control 46.6 percent of the counties wealth. In contrast to the poorest 20 percent who only control 6.5 percent of wealth (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Africa/Morocco-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html). Their upper-class consists of mainly wealthy merchants and Sherfas- descendants of the Prophet Mohammad (the founder of Islam). There is also the monarch and royal family, as well as government employees who are part of the upper-class. Although only a small portion of Moroccans currently make up the middle-class, this is quickly changing as they are rapidly growing into a more dominant class. Their middle-class consists of professors, doctors, civil servants, and lawyers. Another reason for Morocco’s variation in income distribution is due to the three choices of employment. The highest wages are for those who work for private company’s within Morocco. Although these employees have a greater risk of losing their jobs, they can make up to $44,000 a month. The more stable but drastically less paying option is to work for the states in the country. They only make about $160 a month but are forced to work these jobs because they don’t have inside connections with private companies. The third employment option is the entrepreneurs; they make anywhere within that rage of salaries depending on their success (http://www.mkeever.com/morocco.html). Then there is still an eight-percent unemployment rate which has continued to decline in recent years. Morocco is working to improve poverty which has continued to plague them, but while many Moroccans endure the low-class lifestyle, there are the very few that own the majority of the country and bring in the bulk of the income in this unbalanced country.
