{"id":4397,"date":"2026-05-24T18:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T18:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/?p=4397"},"modified":"2026-05-24T18:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T18:39:15","slug":"farrakchia-gate-how-market-lobbies-swallowed-7-6-billion-while-meat-became-a-luxury-for-moroccans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/farrakchia-gate-how-market-lobbies-swallowed-7-6-billion-while-meat-became-a-luxury-for-moroccans\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFarrakchia Gate\u201d: How Market Lobbies Swallowed $7.6 Billion While Meat Became a Luxury for Moroccans"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Morocco, some crises do not begin inside ministries or official reports, but in the marketplace. In front of a butcher\u2019s counter, in the embarrassed silence of a father asking for the price of meat before walking away empty-handed, in the words of a small farmer admitting he sold his last livestock because he could no longer afford animal feed. It is from this everyday reality that the debate led by journalist Younes Maskine<\/span><\/span> alongside Youssef El Hairch<\/span><\/span> and several Moroccan intellectuals and activists attempted to expose the hidden mechanics behind what many now call \u201cFarrakchia Gate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussion was not merely about rising meat prices. It sought to explain how the Moroccan state could mobilize nearly 76 billion dirhams \u2014 through subsidies, tax and customs exemptions, import support, transportation aid, and livestock feed assistance \u2014 while ordinary citizens still found themselves paying more than 120 dirhams per kilogram of meat.<\/p>\n

At that point, the debate moved beyond the simple issue of inflation and entered something far deeper: the structure of the Moroccan market itself.<\/p>\n

Throughout the discussion, Youssef El Hairch emphasized a crucial point: much of these billions were not direct cash transfers visible to the public. Instead, they consisted of invisible economic mechanisms \u2014 canceled customs duties, tax exemptions, logistical support, subsidies for feed imports, and financial advantages granted to importers. In practice, the state was lowering the cost of importing livestock in order to flood the market and supposedly reduce prices.<\/p>\n

Yet one question kept returning: if import costs were reduced, why did prices not truly fall for consumers?<\/p>\n

The answer suggested during the debate was unsettling: because Morocco\u2019s meat market is not genuinely competitive. Entering this sector requires major capital, logistical infrastructure, storage capacity, international trade connections, and access to distribution networks. When the state opens import channels, it is not small rural farmers who benefit most, but already powerful economic actors.<\/p>\n

This is where the debate became essential in explaining \u201chow the game works.\u201d Citizens often assume that reducing taxes automatically leads to lower prices. But in a market concentrated in the hands of a limited number of operators, exemptions can simply increase profit margins without producing proportional benefits for consumers.<\/p>\n

The discussion illustrated how every stage of the chain \u2014 importation, transportation, storage, slaughterhouses, distribution, retail \u2014 adds its own layer of profit. When only a few actors dominate these stages, the market ceases to function as a truly competitive system and instead becomes a structure where control over supply matters more than free-market principles themselves.<\/p>\n

One of the strongest moments of the debate concerned Morocco\u2019s small farmers. Participants argued that current policies have not only failed to reduce prices but have also accelerated the disappearance of small-scale rural producers. Between drought, soaring feed prices, and declining purchasing power, many livestock farmers have been forced out of the sector entirely. The paradox is striking: while the state injected billions to \u201csave the market,\u201d the traditional social foundation of Morocco\u2019s livestock economy was collapsing.<\/p>\n

The debate also acquired a political dimension. Repeatedly, participants raised a difficult question: who actually oversees the use of public money? Parliament? Regulatory institutions? The Competition Council? Or has the market itself become stronger than the institutions meant to regulate it?<\/p>\n

One of the most powerful remarks made during the discussion referred not only to \u201cthe normalization of corruption,\u201d but more dangerously, to \u201cthe normalization of the absence of fighting corruption.\u201d This distinction is critical. According to the speakers, the problem is no longer merely the existence of privilege networks, but the fact that society increasingly treats them as normal.<\/p>\n

This normalization also appears in the psychological relationship Moroccans now have with prices. When meat prices rose from 70 to 90 dirhams per kilogram, it was shocking. Then 100 dirhams became \u201cacceptable.\u201d Eventually, 120 dirhams started to feel like the new normal. The debate revealed how societies gradually adapt to inflation until they lose memory of pre-crisis realities.<\/p>\n

The government, meanwhile, presents a different narrative. Officials argue that these interventions prevented prices from exploding even further and helped preserve Morocco\u2019s national livestock supply. But this technocratic explanation collides directly with citizens\u2019 lived experience. People do not compare today\u2019s prices with hypothetical worse scenarios; they compare them with what they actually paid only a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the debate was not really about meat alone. It was about Morocco itself. About an economic model in which the state injects billions into increasingly concentrated markets, while ordinary citizens feel they no longer see the real benefits of that money in their daily lives.<\/p>\n

And perhaps that is why the issue resonated so strongly. Because beyond the numbers, it exposed a deeper fracture: a country where citizens constantly hear about billions spent in their name, while they themselves continue to eat less, pay more, and watch a market that increasingly seems designed for those who already understand \u2014 and control \u2014 its invisible rules.<\/p>\n