Rabat - Morocco is set to provide direct financial aid for disadvantaged families for housing purposes.

While presenting the highlights of the 2023 state budget, Morocco’s Economy and Finance Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui announced that the country is adopting a new approach to supporting disadvantaged families to enter the housing market.

The minister explained that this new approach would replace a previous one based on offering real estate developers free land and tax reliefs, making it difficult to assess the social and economic effect of the policies.

The previous policy proved its limitation in addressing the country’s housing issue. Under the 2022 state budget, Morocco subsidized housing by exempting real estate developers from taxes on operations relating to providing 50 to 80-square-meter housing units under a price of MAD 250,000 ($22,922) before taxes.

Through these measures, Morocco aims to encourage disadvantaged families to enter the housing markete. In addition, the country is working to eradicate slums and sub-standard, illegally built settlements.

Morocco's real estate market is sustaining significant pressure amid the COVID-29 market shock and declining purchasing power.

Since 2019, the national residential real estate price index (REPI) has been steadily declining and real estate transactions have plummeted, according to data from the country’s central bank Bank Al-Maghrib.

While the government has recently unveiled a number of initiatives relating to affordable housing, demand outmatches supply, as Morocco’s Urbanism and Housing Minister, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, noted in September.

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