The government opened the borders, relieved importers of customs duties, and covered VAT with billions. The intention was commendable: to cushion the effects of a persistent drought, curb the surge in prices, and protect the battered purchasing power of citizens. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

Despite this massive public support, red meat remains out of reach for a large portion of the country’s population. The price per kilo continues to hit stratospheric levels, far from the government’s promises and optimistic projections. The hope for relief at market stalls has turned into a costly and ineffective mirage, raising one key question: who is really benefiting from this system?

Before answering that, we need to look back at the series of decisions made by the government of Aziz Akhannouch to combat the combined consequences of a long and severe drought, rising agricultural input prices, and tensions on global food markets. To contain inflation on such a symbolic product as red meat and support purchasing power, the government introduced a number of exceptional measures.

Turning to foreign livestock

Among these measures were two one-time subsidies for the importation of sheep intended for slaughter (500 dirhams per head), implemented during Aïd Al Adha in 2023 and 2024.

Most notably, a suspension of customs duties on imports of domestic cattle was enacted on October 21, 2022. Initially set to last until the end of 2023, the exemption was later extended for one year, through December 31, 2024, with a cap set at 100,000 head. The quota was later raised to 120,000 head, “due to the persistent increase in beef prices and in order to ensure a continuous supply of red meat to the local market while taking into account climate-related constraints,” explained the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

At the same time, the government expanded this policy to domestic sheep, providing logistical and administrative support to importers in order to facilitate the introduction of livestock from foreign markets. A policy that the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development, and Water and Forests justifies by “the need to secure supply and avoid any shortage likely to cause new tensions on consumer prices.” Authorities also affirmed, through government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas, that the measure had indeed enabled the mass importation of livestock for slaughter.

Beneficiaries: a numbers game

It must be said that the government did not need to deploy major resources to generate interest: as soon as the first measures suspending customs duties and covering VAT were announced, an opportunistic dynamic quickly formed around the livestock import market. Alongside long-established fatteners, a wave of new entrants — often with profiles far removed from the livestock sector — saw this exceptional opening as a low-risk commercial opportunity, heavily supported by public funds.

Data on these players is abundant but varies depending on the source. Last February, on Medi1 TV, the Minister of Industry and Trade, Ryad Mezzour, mentioned the existence of 18 speculators active in the red meat sector. These operators, according to him, “disrupt the market” and justify the implementation of corrective mechanisms. A month later, at an event organized by the Lafqui Titouani Foundation, the President of the House of Representatives, Rachid Talbi Alami, under the banner of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), dismissed the figures put forward by Mezzour as well as by the Minister of Equipment, Nizar Baraka, and instead cited a much higher total: nearly one hundred actors.

For his part, Mohamed Nabil Benabdallah, Secretary General of the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS), cited other figures, based on additional information provided by the Ministry of Economy and Finance to parliamentary groups in the House of Representatives as part of the preparatory work for the 2025 Finance Bill. According to these figures, the exceptional subsidies granted for the importation of sheep between February 10, 2023, and October 22, 2024, benefited 144 importers. As for the exemptions related to the importation of cattle, applied between October 21, 2023, and October 22, 2024, they benefited 133 operators, according to the document consulted by TelQuel.

Subsidy rush

In short, while the numbers vary, they all lead to the same conclusion: they highlight a clear enthusiasm for the scheme. And the data published by the National Interprofessional Office of Cereals and Legumes (ONICL), under the sheep import subsidy mechanism — a public aid set at 500 dirhams per head — provides a concrete illustration.

According to these lists, consulted by TelQuel, around a hundred companies have benefited from the measures. Among the 80 companies whose data was verified by our team, 47 were created before 2022, 8 in 2022, 21 in 2023, and 12 in 2024. In other words, more than 40% of the entities active in this program were established after the exemption measures came into effect, pointing to a late surge of interest likely driven by the existence of targeted and loosely regulated subsidies.

Even more revealing: some companies, although registered well before the scheme was introduced, modified their statutes to enter this new segment. In Casablanca, the company X Properties, founded in October 2015 and co-managed by Aabed Badil and Yassine El Gajdayh, amended its business activities in October 2023 to include the importation of sheep and cattle. In Nador, AGRAS, a company created in 2011 under the leadership of Manssour Zidi, made a similar modification in May 2024. As for SICOC, founded in Fez in 1995, it added the importation, breeding, and marketing of live animals for human consumption to its corporate purpose in January 2024, under the leadership of the heirs of Najia Squalli Houssaini.

nalysis of the lists reveals another trend: the limited number of actors and beneficiaries of the exemptions and subsidies, sometimes through multiple legal entities. In Témara, Mohamed El Garn appears at the head of three separate companies benefiting from the scheme: Comalive (with a 2023 turnover of 114 million dirhams), Engraissement Skhirat, and Ajoul d’Engraissement, created in June 2023. A similar pattern emerges in Nador, where Mohamed Anou, head of Elevage Anou, founded Elvano in August 2023; both companies are currently eligible for exemptions. In Tétouan, Abdeslam El Biari, president of the Chamber of Agriculture for the Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceïma region, under the RNI banner, active in importation since 1996 via Ebidanord, founded Engrainord in August 2023, with both entities now participating in the program. The same duplication strategy is seen in Casablanca, where Fayçal Chaoui appears on the lists through Comarne and Mix Food, and Mustapha Hamdouchi through Hamdouchi Elevage and Zerika Boucherie.

In some cases, the organizational strategy goes beyond simply creating multiple distinct legal entities and extends into full-fledged family networks, with various family members involved in several separate companies. This is the case with the Ahahaoui family, whose members appear on the boards of Comalive, Mawachi de l’Engraissement, and Engraissement Skhirat. The Azri family, meanwhile, shares management of two beneficiary companies: Société Agro-Alimentaire de Gharb and Green Valley Farm. In Témara, the El Kasmi brothers each run their own company: Jad Elevage (headed by Alae-Eddine El Kasmi) and Rmamha Agricole (led by Rachid El Kasmi). All are listed among the companies eligible for the state subsidy.

A hefty bill for the state

A thorough examination of the practices of certain beneficiary companies reveals an alarming truth: this program has been diverted from its original mission to serve the interests of a small circle of privileged actors. Multiplication of entities, legal duplication, family-based capture strategies — all these mechanisms expose the flaws, and therefore the failure, of a system designed for the public good. And it is public finances that are now bearing the cost.

According to Mohamed Nabil Benabdallah, relying on figures provided by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the measures implemented to support cattle and sheep importers represent a total cost of 13.3 billion dirhams for the state, between October 21, 2022, and October 22, 2024.

In detail, this amount includes the exceptional subsidy granted for Aïd Al Adha 2024 for the importation of 474,312 head of sheep, resulting in a loss of 237 million dirhams. Added to this is a budget of 5.03 billion dirhams allocated for the exemption granted to 144 sheep importers: 3.86 billion dirhams in customs duty waivers, 1.16 billion dirhams in VAT coverage, and an extension of the exemption through December 2024, generating an additional cost of 15.7 million dirhams (customs duties) and 1.6 million dirhams (VAT).

The largest share, however, comes from cattle imports. The exemptions implemented between October 2022 and December 2024 for the benefit of 133 importers resulted in a loss of 8.04 billion dirhams for the Treasury. The waiver of customs duties accounted for 7.3 billion dirhams, while the VAT coverage since February 2023 cost an additional 744 million dirhams.

Getting fat on credit

Behind these subsidies, some companies have built rapid success stories, fueled by public money

But these figures reflect only part of the public spending. One must also add the direct subsidy of 500 dirhams per imported head in 2023, as well as various programs that benefited fatteners and breeders, including investment subsidies (for building facilities, acquiring equipment, purchasing breeding stock), as well as aid intended for rebuilding the dairy cattle herd.

Thanks to these subsidies, some companies have built rapid success stories, fueled by public money. On the lists analyzed by TelQuel, several companies stand out for the amounts received and their meteoric growth. Starting with FertiAfrica, founded in 2017 in Casablanca and led by Yassine Taybi. The company declared a subsidy of 91 million dirhams in 2022, boosting its revenue from 111 million dirhams in 2021 to 192 million in 2022. In Fez, SICOC, managed by the heirs of Najia Squalli Houssaini, received 18.6 million dirhams between 2021 and 2023. Comalive, the company of Mohamed El Garn, received 19 million dirhams in 2023, with revenue rising from 3.5 million dirhams in 2020 to over 114 million three years later.

Other examples confirm this trend. Engraissement Meknès, with revenue under 30 million dirhams in 2023, received a subsidy of 11.1 million dirhams. In Casablanca, DEXEP, created in May 2022, benefited from nearly 5 million dirhams. In Nador, Sadriaa Agricole, led by Said Boudakhani, a well-known real estate figure, received 7.3 million dirhams, boosting its revenue from 1.1 million in 2022 to over 56 million in 2023. Finally, in Fez, Union Céréales, founded by Adil Zemmouri, received 19.5 million dirhams between 2021 and 2023 — a sum representing nearly half of its 2023 revenue.

Invisible subsidies on the plate

At the citizen level, the billions spent by the state to support livestock imports and ease pressure on the food market have left no tangible trace on market stalls — and thus on plates. Worse still, even members of the government are either denouncing or struggling to conceal the inefficiency of the program. Like Minister of Industry and Trade Ryad Mezzour, who has called for action against speculative practices; Minister Delegate for the Budget Fouzi Lekjaâ, who recently admitted the failure of the 500-dirham-per-head subsidy; or government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas, who continues to blame middlemen for the surge in prices… The government remains bogged down in a rhetoric of justification, without ever delivering concrete results.

The successive announcements have therefore had no impact on consumers’ daily lives. Interviewed by TelQuel Arabi, Abdelhak Boutchichi, an agricultural advisor accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture, is unequivocal. On the eve of Aïd Al Adha, the price of red meat ranged between 120 and 160 dirhams per kilo for sheep, and between 90 and 120 dirhams for cattle. “The variation depends on the region, the distribution channels, and especially the cuts,” he explains. He does note, however, a temporary drop in prices following the royal appeal to refrain from performing the Aïd sacrifice — a decision driven by the combined effects of drought, soaring prices, and a shrinking livestock population.

For Abdelhak Boutchichi, it is clear that the government’s measures failed to achieve their stabilizing goal. The explanation, he says, lies in the absence of safeguards in the terms of reference governing imports: “Operators who received a 500-dirham-per-head subsidy also received subsidized feed. But nothing obligated them to sell the animals during Aïd. As a result, many kept their herds to sell them later, maximizing their profit margin at the expense of the original objective of market supply.”

“Several importers pocketed millions of dirhams in subsidies without fulfilling their mission. The program was designed without any verification mechanism or obligation to deliver results”

A harsh assessment, backed by on-the-ground practices. “Several importers pocketed millions of dirhams in subsidies without fulfilling their mission. The program was designed without any verification mechanism or obligation to deliver results,” he states firmly.

To this failure is added the absence of any effective price control. Importers resold the imported red meat at the same price as locally produced meat, even though acquisition costs were significantly lower, the expert points out. “That defeats the very purpose of subsidized imports,” he asserts. And he concludes: “All the measures that were implemented mainly benefited a handful of major importers. As for the breeders, they didn’t see any of it. And consumers? They’re still paying top price.”

Abdelhak Boutchichi also draws a more structural conclusion: “Drought or the cost of feed is often cited as the trigger for the crisis. But in reality, it’s the very architecture of the livestock agricultural policy that is at fault.”

He points to the long-term effects of the Green Morocco Plan, one of whose major focuses was the reorientation of farmland toward arboriculture, localized irrigation, and high-value crops. “This was done at the expense of forage and cereal crops. By replacing fallow lands and grazing areas with olive trees, avocado trees, or citrus groves, we reduced essential pastureland for livestock and worsened the herd’s vulnerability to climate shocks.”

In his view, the drought merely exposed the flaws of an unbalanced agricultural model. The result? An emergency import policy, heavily subsidized but structurally ineffective, that struggles to hide the deep shortcomings of a system weakened by long-term strategic choices. And measures that, instead of benefiting citizens, farmers, and local breeders, have mainly allowed a handful of private investors to see their revenues soar.

Written in French by Younes Saoury, edited in English by Eric Nielson