Editor’s Note
This article highlights a concerning divergence in Morocco’s gold and jewelry sector, where surging imports contrast sharply with a stagnant domestic market. The data underscores significant economic shifts that warrant close attention from industry stakeholders and policymakers.
While Morocco’s imports of gold and jewelry are on the rise, the local market is stagnating, and the outlook is not promising.
According to official data in the 2024 annual report, the Administration of Customs and Indirect Taxes recorded a 51% increase in Morocco’s imports of “industrial gold” between 2023 and 2024. This increase represents an additional financial value of 0.3 billion dirhams, reaching 0.9 billion dirhams, compared to 0.6 billion at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, the local market is stagnant.
The reason, as explained to Hespress by Mohamed Mourchid, President of the National Association of Jewelry and Goldsmithing Artisans and Industrialists in Morocco, is that “many members of the Moroccan diaspora now prefer to buy gold and jewelry in their country of residence or abroad, rather than stimulating the Moroccan market.”
he added, also specifying that “the deterioration of the purchasing power of the majority of social strata in Morocco contributes to the current situation.”
Regarding the fight against money laundering, the Customs Administration stated in its report on the past fiscal year that it “continues its activities on the front of combating money laundering and illicit financial flows, by continuously strengthening control and monitoring mechanisms on the ground.” “Among the notable operations of 2024 were: significant sums of money, gold and silver ingots, precious stones, as well as luxury watches and jewelry seized by customs services,” the report indicates, without however specifying the volume or value of the ingots or jewelry seized by customs in Morocco.
For Mourchid, it is necessary to “support investors and professionals authorized to import gold certified and guaranteed by customs.” He also calls to “simplify import regulations and procedures to stifle the activities of traffickers of ingots and jewelry (…) who have started marketing suspicious or counterfeit products on social networks.” The professional also raised “the need to strengthen control over the ‘temporary export license for improvement of unfinished work’, issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce without follow-up on its impact,” calling it a “rent-seeking license” that contributes to market stagnation and weak demand.