Morocco's economy: phosphate for the world's farms and rain for its own

Who mines Morocco's phosphate and how much is there

The Office Chérifien des Phosphates was created under the French protectorate in 1920 to mine phosphate at Khouribga, and a direct rail line carried the rock to the port of Casablanca. Extraction rose from 39,000 tons in 1921 to almost 2 million tons in 1930. The Moroccans who worked those mines had no social protection, were forbidden to unionise and earned a small fraction of what Europeans were paid, according to Wikipedia's article on the protectorate.

The office still runs the whole trade. The United States Geological Survey's yearbook for 2020 and 2021 describes the OCP Group as wholly owned by the government and, through more than 30 subsidiaries and joint ventures, the country's sole producer of phosphate rock and phosphate fertiliser, with 19,865 employees in 2019. In 2020 mining accounted for 21.1% of Morocco's export revenue and 10% of nominal GDP, and phosphate mining and processing made up 90% of that GDP share.

How much rock lies in the ground depends on who counted and when. The Survey's 2026 summary credits Morocco with phosphate rock reserves of 50 billion tonnes, against a world total of 73 billion. Its yearbook for 2020 and 2021 gave the same 50 billion as about 70% of the world's reserves, and Wikipedia's economy article puts the share at 75% without giving a year. Output is counted two ways as well: the Survey estimated 36 million tonnes of marketable rock for 2025, and OCP's own page gives the group's annual output as 50 million tonnes as of 2025.

The Survey counts four mining centres, and each sends its rock to the coast by its own route.

The shares are the Survey's and the routes are OCP's. OCP calls Khouribga home to the majority of the reserves, where the Survey gives it 43%, and credits it with 70% of the group's output.

The Survey's yearbook says it includes the mineral industry of the Western Sahara region in its chapter on Morocco, and OCP's page places the Bou Craa mine "in the Southern Provinces of Morocco". The status of Western Sahara is disputed. Phosboucraa, the OCP subsidiary that runs the mine, exported 1.0 million tonnes of rock in 2019 against 1.9 million in 2018, a fall the Survey attributed to the political conflict over the territory's sovereignty.

Why the rock leaves Morocco as acid and fertiliser

In 2021 Morocco exported 5.7 billion dollars of natural and chemical fertilisers, 2.2 billion of phosphoric acid and 995 million of raw phosphate rock, by the Survey's reading of Bank Al-Maghrib's trade figures. By weight the three sat closer together: 10.8 million tonnes of fertiliser, 9.9 million of rock and 2.1 million of acid. OCP's share of world trade that year was 54% in phosphoric acid, 34% in phosphate rock and 26% in phosphate-based fertilisers.

How Safi and Jorf Lasfar turn rock into fertiliser

Two coastal complexes do the converting. Safi opened in 1965 as Maroc Chimie, with Maroc Phosphore I added in 1976 and Maroc Phosphore II in 1981, and it takes its rock by rail from Youssoufia and Benguerir. Jorf Lasfar opened in 1986 on 2,000 hectares. It receives Khouribga's rock as slurry through the 235 km pipeline, which runs by gravity and, on OCP's figures, saves 3 million cubic metres of water a year. OCP's page, as read in October 2026, gives the complex's annual production as 15 million tonnes of plant nutrients in more than 100 grades. Five joint ventures there bring in foreign partners, among them Tata and Birla in IMACID, the Fauji Group in PAKPHOS and Koch in KOFERT.

The group has a 13 billion dollar investment plan for 2023 to 2027. A new hub at Mzinda is meant to produce 3 million tonnes of phosphoric acid a year from 2026, and the Safi Phosphate Hub, under construction on 800 hectares, is planned to make 8.4 million tonnes of triple superphosphate by 2028.

What the fertiliser plants import

Both complexes run sulphuric acid units, and the sulphur is bought abroad: Morocco imported 7.2 million tonnes of it in 2020, worth 514 million dollars, and 6.7 million tonnes in 2021, worth 1.1 billion, mainly from the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Poland and the United States.

So the price of the fertiliser follows the price of what goes into it. Bank Al-Maghrib expected phosphate prices to stay high through 2026 because of a surge in the price of sulphur and China's continued restrictions on its own phosphate fertiliser exports. For products of Moroccan origin, on estimates by the Commodities Research Unit, it expected diammonium phosphate to average 860 dollars a tonne in 2026 after 713 in 2025, and triple superphosphate 658 dollars after 529. Exports of phosphate and its derivatives were projected to grow 9.7% in 2026 and a further 12.1% in 2027, to 122.6 billion dirhams.

A buyer can also close a market. After the American company Mosaic asked the United States authorities in 2020 to investigate Moroccan and Russian phosphate fertiliser for alleged subsidies, Moroccan chemical fertiliser exports to the United States fell 62%, from 729 million dollars in 2019 to 276 million in 2020.

How the rain still sets Morocco's growth rate

Wikipedia's economy article gives farming about 10.7% of GDP and 26.6% of the working population, and attaches no year to either figure. Of about 85,000 square kilometres of arable land, roughly one-seventh can be irrigated, and cereals, which make up most of the sector's value added, depend on each year's rainfall. In a normal year the country grows about two-thirds of the wheat, barley and maize it consumes. The Moroccan economist Brahim Mansouri estimated in a 2008 study for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa that an extreme drought would cut the growth rate of real GDP by 10%.

Part of the farm sector runs on groundwater. On the Atlantic plains olives, citrus fruit and wine grapes are watered largely from artesian wells, and the 2018 harvest included 1.5 million tonnes of olives and 1.2 million tonnes of tangerines beside 7.3 million tonnes of wheat.

One crop sits outside the accounts. Cannabis has been grown in the Rif since the seventh century; a UN survey put cultivation at about 1,340 square kilometres in 2003, and the UN valued it at 0.57% of GDP in 2002. Parliament voted on 26 May 2021 to legalise it for medical, cosmetic and industrial use.

What a harvest has done to growth

The table mixes vintages, and revisions move the figures. HCP's provisional national accounts, published in June 2026, put growth in 2024 at 4.4%, while the IMF's table of March 2026 has 3.8%. Growth outside farming in 2025 was 3.9% in HCP's accounts, 4.5% in Bank Al-Maghrib's September statement and 4.9% in the IMF's table. Wikipedia's economy article gives growth in 2001 as 6.5% in one section and 5% in another.

In 2026 the harvest carried a year in which the mines and factories slowed. Bank Al-Maghrib expected growth outside farming to fall from 4.5% in 2025 to 3.1%, naming mining and manufacturing, while farm output rose 16% on a cereal crop the Department of Agriculture estimated at 93 million quintals. Fishing went against the farms in 2025, contracting 13% after growing 8.8% in 2024, by HCP's count.

How much water the farms have left

Rainfall has been declining since 1970. The World Bank's climate portal gives Morocco average annual precipitation of 296.29 mm for 1995 to 2014 and a change of minus 13.19 mm per decade since 1970 in the ERA5 reanalysis. Renewable water per person fell from 2,560 cubic metres a year in 1960 to about 620 in 2020, and agriculture uses 80% of the water resources.

In February 2024 the General Directorate of Water reported dams across the nine basins 23.17% full, a drop of nearly 8% on the year before, with the Oum Er-Rbia basin at 8% and the Loukos at 56%, according to a Carnegie Endowment commentary. On 26 December 2023 the Interior Ministry had asked local authorities to ration water, and swimming pools could be filled only once a year. The BTI's 2026 country report records criticism that the Green Morocco Plan overexploited fragile groundwater in water-scarce regions.

The phosphate plants on the coast make their own water. Seawater desalination meets all of Jorf Lasfar's water needs, the site has been self-sufficient in raw water since 2023, and it also supplies drinking water to El Jadida and the south of Casablanca. At Safi two desalination plants with a combined capacity of 35 million cubic metres a year supply the complex and the city's drinking water.

What the car plants at Tangier and Kenitra build

Renault opened its Tanger Méditerranée plant in 2012, with annual production of over 250,000 units. By the Tanger Med special agency's account, cars from Renault's plants at Tanger Med and Casablanca and from the Stellantis plant at Kenitra go by rail to the Tanger port complex, which ships them to more than 70 countries. The port handled 578,500 vehicles in 2023, 21% more than the year before, by the BTI report's count.

Most of the work around the port is in parts. The agency's industrial platform listed nearly 120 automotive operators when its page was read in October 2026, making wiring, stamped metal, seats and moulded plastics for the plants in Morocco and for assembly lines in Spain: Stellantis at Vigo, Volkswagen at Barcelona, Ford at Valencia and Renault at Valladolid.

Vehicle exports to the European Union reached 15.1 billion euros in 2023, up 30%, by the BTI's figures, and the stated aim was 1 million vehicles a year by 2025. Wikipedia's economy article records automotive exports up more than 27% in 2023, to 141 billion dirhams, and 85,000 jobs created in the sector between 2014 and 2018, for a total of 158,000.

Growth slowed after that. Exports from the automotive industry rose 6.3% in 2024, against 14.9% for aerospace and 13.1% for phosphates and derivatives, and Bank Al-Maghrib described car exports in 2025 as near stagnation before a projected recovery to 202.2 billion dirhams in 2027. Battery investment followed: China committed more than 4 billion dollars to electric-vehicle battery factories in Morocco in 2024, among them a 1.3 billion dollar gigafactory by Gotion High-Tech set for 2026.

The plants sell into markets opened by treaty: the EU-Morocco Association Agreement, signed in 1996 and in force from 2000, and a free trade agreement with the United States from 2006. In 2022 the European Union took 56% of Morocco's exports, and in 2023 Spain took 22.5% and France 20.5%.

Where Morocco's foreign currency comes from

The table sets the four large earners of foreign currency beside the energy bill.

The 2023 column comes from Wikipedia's economy article, which reports that year's trade figures; the projections are Bank Al-Maghrib's, made at its board meeting of 22 September 2026.

The tourism ministry counted 19.8 million visitors in 2025, 14% more than in 2024 and 53% more than in 2019, with foreign-currency receipts of 138 billion dirhams. The government's target for 2025 had been 18 million, and its road map aims at 26 million in 2030, the year Morocco co-hosts the football World Cup with Spain and Portugal. Estimates of tourism's weight differ by source: the World Travel and Tourism Council put it at 12.3% of GDP in 2024, while Wikipedia's Morocco article gives 7% of GDP for the nearly 16 million visitors counted by November 2024.

Money sent home by Moroccans abroad came to 5.7 billion dollars in 2007 and more than 7.4 billion in 2020, when the World Bank put it at 6.4% of GDP.

Energy is bought almost entirely abroad: the International Energy Agency's 2014 report put imports at over 91% of energy supplied. Net energy imports were 11.5 billion dollars in 2025 in the IMF's table and were projected at 14.9 billion for 2026. Bank Al-Maghrib expected the energy bill to rise 28.4% in 2026, to 138.1 billion dirhams, with subsidies to road hauliers and unchanged butane and electricity prices limiting the effect on domestic prices. The BTI report gives a target of 52% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

The IMF put the current account deficit at 2.1% of GDP for 2025 and Bank Al-Maghrib at 2.4%, and the bank expected 4.6% in 2026. Official reserves were projected at 502.8 billion dirhams at the end of 2026, equal to about five and a half months of imports of goods and services.

Why Morocco's unemployment figures disagree with each other

The official counts of joblessness in circulation in 2026 ran from 9.5% to 21.3%, and HCP's own explanations put the gap down to method.

The High Commission for Planning (HCP) runs both the census and the survey, and in December 2024 it explained the census figure: the census asks fewer questions over a shorter reference period, so it can count underemployed people as unemployed and miss irregular work, and the quarterly survey, run to International Labour Organization standards, is the reference. The 2014 census had shown a similar gap.

In 2026 the survey itself changed. The new labour force survey, EMO2026, counts as employment only work done for pay or profit, so people producing mainly for their own household's use are no longer employed in its terms, and it adopts strict unemployment, which counts only people without work who are available and actively searching. Its sample grew from 90,000 to 135,000 households a year. HCP warns that its results cannot be compared directly with the old survey's.

On those definitions, strict unemployment in the second quarter of 2026 was 9.5% overall, 11.9% in towns and 5.4% in the countryside, and 406,000 jobs had been created over the year. A government report in 2006 had put the need at a net 400,000 new jobs a year for two decades. The labour force numbered 11,764,000, a participation rate of 42.2%: 66.5% for men and 18.1% for women. Youth unemployment was 27.2% in the same quarter.

Much of the work sits outside the formal economy. The BTI report puts the informal economy at 31.8% of GDP and two-thirds of employment, Wikipedia's economy article puts informal jobs at about 80%, and neither gives a year. A third of the workforce still lacked social protection in 2024, by the BTI's account, and the pension system covered 40% of it.

How Bank Al-Maghrib holds the dirham steady

The dirham was reintroduced in 1960, replacing the francs that France had minted for the protectorate from 1921 to 1956. It is pegged to a basket of 60% euro and 40% United States dollar, and since 2018 Bank Al-Maghrib has widened the band in which it may move from 0.3% either side to 5%, and the dirham has been fully convertible for current account transactions since the same year. Law No. 76-03 gives the bank autonomy over monetary policy.

Inflation peaked at 10.1% in early 2023, by Wikipedia's figure, and averaged 0.8% in 2025 by the IMF's. For 2024 the sources disagree, with 0.9% in the IMF's table and 1.5% in Wikipedia's economy article. Prices rose 0.3% on average over the first eight months of 2026, held down by falling food prices, olive oil in particular, and the bank expected 0.7% for the year. It cut its key rate from 3.0% to 2.75% in June 2024 and held it at 2.25% on 22 September 2026.

The budget deficit was 3.5% of GDP in 2025 and central government debt 67.1%, which the IMF projects to fall to 60.5% by 2031. Nominal GDP was 183 billion dollars in 2025 in the IMF's table. From 1971 to 2024 GDP grew 4.13% a year on average and GDP per head 2.33%.

Who owns the banks and mines in Morocco

State control reaches well beyond phosphate. The BTI's 2026 report lists state control over phosphate extraction, hydrocarbons and transport, monopolies held by state-owned enterprises in phosphates, telecoms and energy, limits on foreign ownership in agriculture and the major banks, and a 15% premium on foreign bids in public tenders.

Al Mada, the royal family's holding company, holds stakes across banking and mining. The BTI report gives it 47% of Attijariwafa bank, which operates in 25 countries. The Survey's yearbook gives the Al Mada-Positive Impact Fund 81.4% of Managem, Morocco's only producer of cobalt, copper and nickel in 2020. The BTI report describes the king as a major economic actor with extensive holdings in key industries and records widespread conflicts of interest between political power and business.

Most firms are small: in the BTI's 2026 figures 84.4% of businesses take in less than 1 million dirhams a year and employ fewer than 10 people.

Competition enforcement is contested. In 2023 and 2024 the Competition Council fined fuel companies 180 million dollars and Maroc Telecom 630 million, a sum larger than the operator's profit for 2023, and the BTI report notes that no payment had been confirmed.

Privatisation has run since 1993. The state sold 35% of Maroc Telecom in 2001, and in July 2023 the management of drinking water, electricity and sanitation passed to private companies, by the BTI's account. The Casablanca Stock Exchange was founded in 1929 and came into wider use after the financial reforms of 1993, with privatisation driving trade there in shares of former state companies.