The High Commission for Planning (HCP) recently published the results of the quarterly business surveys for the first quarter of 2023 that it carried out among companies operating in the wholesale trade sectors.
From the results of the analysis of the main assessments of business leaders, it appears that “the expectations of 74% of wholesalers show stability in the overall volume of sales for the first quarter of 2023”, indicated the High Commission.
In an information note relating to the results of the said surveys, the public body headed by Ahmed Lahlimi Alimi notes that only 15% of them expect an increase in sales at the end of the first quarter of 2023.
According to the explanations of the institution, responsible for the production, analysis and publication of official statistics in Morocco, this development is mainly attributable to the expected increase in sales in the “Wholesale trade of household goods” and the “Wholesale trade in raw agricultural products and live animals”.
Still according to the HCP, this development would also be linked to the expected drop in sales in the “Wholesale trade of other industrial equipment” and the “Wholesale trade of food products, beverages and tobacco”.
It also emerges from the analysis of these same results that 79% of business leaders surveyed believe that the orders expected for the first quarter of 2023 would be at a normal level.
A prognosis that 14% of them would not share, the latter being convinced that they would be at a lower level than normal at the end of March 2023.
In any case, the majority of wholesalers (88%) questioned in the context of these quarterly surveys maintain that employment would experience stability in the workforce at the end of the first three months of the year, reported the HCP.
In the same information note, the High Commission also took an interest in the assessments of business leaders in this sector on the evolution of activity during the fourth quarter of 2022.
Thus, it appears that the sales of the wholesale trade sector on the local market would have experienced stability in the last quarter of the past year, according to the opinion of 63% of the wholesalers surveyed.
The HCP reports, on the other hand, that nearly a quarter of them (24%) believe that they would have experienced an increase during this period.
As he explains from the same source, this development is mainly attributable to the increase in sales in the “Wholesale trade of information and communication equipment” and the “Wholesale trade of other industrial equipment”.
It should be noted that 83% of business leaders believe that employment would have known stability during the end of last year; 81% of wholesalers maintain that stocks of goods would have been at a normal level, while 33% of respondents believe that the observed trend in selling prices would have shown an increase.
Alain Bouithy