The World Bank’s Board of Directors has approved a $600 million financing package for the third phase of the “Strengthening Human Capital for a Resilient Morocco” program. The last in a series of three, this operation aims to enhance Morocco’s resilience to health risks, improve human capital during childhood, reduce poverty among the elderly, and bolster climate risk management.
Since 2020, Morocco has faced numerous challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, commodity price fluctuations, inflation, a devastating earthquake, and prolonged droughts. In response, Morocco has launched ambitious reforms guided by the New Development Model to foster stronger and more equitable growth. This initiative supports Morocco’s national reforms to expand mandatory health insurance, extend free health insurance to vulnerable populations, overhaul healthcare services, implement a Direct Social Aid program, expand sustainable pension coverage, and improve protection against climate shocks.
The first two financing operations, approved in June 2022 and December 2023, supported substantial legislative changes, including generalizing compulsory health insurance and launching a comprehensive social assistance program. The third operation aims to consolidate these gains by strengthening governance, detailing the implementation of cash transfer and pension schemes, and increasing the effectiveness of disaster risk management.
Morocco is advancing towards Universal Health Coverage by implementing reforms to improve health risk protection through increased health insurance coverage, modernizing health service provision, and ensuring equitable distribution of healthcare workers. The government aims to cover the entire population under a unified health insurance scheme managed by the National Social Security Fund (Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale – CNSS). Despite significant progress, with 75 percent of the population now effectively covered, challenges remain, particularly for non-salaried workers.
The Direct Social Benefits Program, supported by the new National Social Support Agency (Agence Nationale du Soutien Social – ANSS), will target up to 60 percent of the population not covered by other family allowance schemes.
“This initiative, which aligns with the two previous operations, aims to further enhance Morocco’s social protection system. Currently, the system is already helping around 75 percent of the population to have access to more affordable health care and over 40 percent of households to access cash transfers,” said Ahmadou Moustapha Ndiaye, Division Director for the Maghreb and Malta at the World Bank. “These reforms are designed to make the system more comprehensive, equitable, and efficient, particularly benefiting climate-vulnerable populations like farmers.”
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The World Bank Group.
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