Presentation of the Book “Morocco’s Growth and Employment Prospects: Public Policies to avoid the Middle-income Trap”
by invitation
The Policy Center for the New South is organising in partnership with the Ministry of Economics and Finance the book presentation under the theme “Morocco’s Growth and Employment Prospects: Public Policies to avoid the Middle-income Trap” by Mr. Emmanuel Pinto Moreira on Tuesday, February 11 in Rabat.
This book studies Morocco’s growth and employment prospects in the context of a new growth model aimed at allowing the country, in a rapidly changing international environment marked by increased competition from lowwage economies and growing automation of low-skilled jobs, to avoid falling into a middle-income trap. Chapter 1 introduces the changing nature of the international environment facing Morocco and provides the rationale for changing the country’s growth model. Chapter 2 reviews the growth model that Morocco has pursued in the past few decades and discusses its limitations going forward. Chapter 3 characterizes the proposed growth model, which involves, in particular, promoting the transition from labor-intensive imitation activities to technology-intensive innovation activities increasing public investment in advanced infrastructure, improving the quality of education, improving productivity and increasing value added in key sectors (including agriculture, high-end tourism, and renewable energy), and implementing measures designed to promote women’s participation in the labor force and reduce gender inequality. Chapter 4 attempts to quantify the medium-run effects of these policies on growth, employment, and unemployment in Morocco. It concludes that to achieve high-income status and reduce unemployment significantly, Morocco will need to implement far-reaching reforms, to increase growth to a range of 6–7 percent and improve employment creation to about 35,000 jobs per percentage point of growth.
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Dr. Emmanuel Pinto Moreira
Dr. Emmanuel Pinto Moreira is the head of Economic department of the African Development Bank. He is in charge of establishing a strong department as well as genuinely conducting political dialogue with decision makers of the region while heavily focusing on new growth strategies, challenges facing middle income countries, fiscal policies and debt reduction strategies. He served previously as a country senior economist, MENA region, World Bank. His mission was geared towards first conducting political dialogues with Maghreb authorities’ and discussion papers on their visions; second, he provided strategic consulting on major economic challenges facing these countries, more precisely, preventive plans to not fall short. Furthermore, M. Pinto Moreira was in charge of preparing country reports on the macroeconomic perspectives of 18 countries, and review of Economics and Finance of the MENA region; he also managed the knowledge program for the MENA region. As a team leader of Global Practice in charge of Macroeconomic and Fiscal Management (MFM), Dr. Pinto Moreira was in charge of conceiving working agenda for economists and guaranteeing deliverables are insightful and have sound impact on countries development.
Before joining the World Bank, M. Pinto Moreira worked at the International Monetary Fund as a senior economist within the Middle East and Central Asia with a focus on fiscal policies. He was also a senior advisor to the executive director of the 24 French-speaking African countries.
Dr. Pinto Moreira holds a Master degree and received his PhD in Macroeconomics from University of Lorraine in France. As a professor, Dr. Pinto Moreira taught undergraduate students Macroeconomics, Statistics, Econometrics, and microeconomics at both the University of Nancy as well as the University of Metz