2023-04-20 15:25:00
Conjuncture. The measures put in place by the government to mitigate inflationary pressures on certain food products have obviously not convinced Moroccan households to such an extent that their confidence continues to erode.
Cautious and far from optimistic, they are on the contrary convinced that the surge in consumer prices, which has been strangling them for months, will continue over the next 12 months.
Indeed, according to the results of the business survey conducted by the High Commission for Planning (HCP), for the first quarter, 74.5% believe that food prices will continue to rise over the next 12 months. Only 4.7% of households surveyed say they expect them to fall.
The feeling of a sharp increase in food prices is such that “the balance of opinion thus remained negative, standing at minus 69.8 points against minus 71.8 points recorded a quarter earlier and minus 74.1 points a year ago,” as the public body recently pointed out in its briefing note in connection with the said investigation.
It should be recalled in this regard that “recent data show that inflation continues to accelerate, notably under the effect of internal supply shocks on certain food products”, according to an analysis by Bank Al-Maghrib.
In its forecasts, the Central Bank also predicts that “inflation should remain at high levels in the medium term”, that it would come out in 2023 at 5.5% on average, while its underlying component would be at 6.2%. This reflects “an upward revision of 2 percentage points compared to the forecast of last December, mainly due to the soaring prices of certain food products included therein”, she deduced.
For this large institution, these projections assume that the shocks causing this increase would gradually dissipate in the second half following the various measures taken by the government in this regard.
As a reminder, the Board of Bank Al-Maghrib decided on March 21 to raise the key rate by 50 basis points to 3% in order to prevent the triggering of self-perpetuating inflationary spirals and further strengthen the anchoring of inflation expectations with a view to encouraging its return to levels in line with the objective of price stability.
While waiting to assess the impact on the ground, Bank Al-Maghrib predicts that “in 2024, under the assumption that both internal and external pressures would continue to ease, the fundamental price trend would be at 2.3%, but the scheduled start of the decompensation of the prices of subsidized products should keep inflation overall at a high level, i.e. 3.9%”.
Importantly, in the first quarter of 2023, almost all households (98.7%) surveyed by the High Commission said that food prices had increased over the past 12 months.
According to the High Commission, “the balance of opinion thus remained negative, at minus 98.7 points, after having been minus 98.8 points a quarter earlier and minus 97.9 points a year earlier”.
Alain Bouithy
#feeling #meets #reality