(Ecofin Agency) - The World Bank announced last December 3 it will grant Morocco $400 million to support its social protection reform program.

According to the institution, the funds will be used to support, among others, the emergency response of social protection to the covid-19 project. This project aims to support poor and vulnerable households during the pandemic, notably through social assistance in the form of cash transfers.

Beyond the pandemic, which has already affected 379,657 people in Morocco, resulting in 6,245 deaths and 331,301 recoveries, the Moroccan authorities hope that this funding will help strengthen the resilience of populations to future shocks.

In this way, the funds will finance the country's social protection system, in particular by contributing to the deployment of family allowances, while at the same time improving governance, digital infrastructure, and the coherence of the various social programs. Thanks to its contingency funding mechanism, the government will be able to quickly reallocate funds to respond as quickly as possible to possible emergencies in the coming months.

"The program is based on a short- and medium-term approach, aimed at mitigating the impact of the crisis on large segments of the population while supporting the country's efforts to build a strong social protection system. This requires a concerted rethinking of social protection programs to align their objectives and make them more effective," said Mehdi Barouni, Senior Economist at the World Bank.

In Morocco, it is estimated that covid-19 has disempowered about 712,000 formal sector employees and 4 million workers in the informal sector.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou