Daylight Saving in Morocco 2012
Once again Morocco will have an unusual daylight saving schedule. The problem has always been that some people have objected to having the time change during Ramadan. Critics say this makes no logical sense, but is at a religious sensibility.
There will be a lot of time changing in Morocco this year
With Ramadan moving earlier each year, it is an ongoing problem and this year a new solution has been found. Morocco will set its clocks one hour ahead from the end of April to the end of September - except during the holy month of Ramadan. Daylight saving will resume after Ramadan. This has been decided by the Government’s Council.
The history of daylight saving has been a mixed one that started in 2008. Morocco decided to trial daylight saving time when it moved the clock one hour forward (UTC+1) at midnight between May 31 and June 1 . The daylight saving schedule was supposed to end September 28th that year. However, the many individuals and business groups were surprised when a decision was suddenly made to end the daylight saving date nearly a month ahead of schedule. The decision also played havoc with international airline schedules. (See our 2008 story here) Hopefully this year will see the time changes running smoothly, though how airline schedules will deal with the on-again then off-again for Ramadan (probable dates are July 21 to August 19 ) and then on-again... is anyone's guess. A draft decree, adopted by the Government’s Council stipulates that the standard time will be resumed at 3 am on the last Sunday in September,. Speaking in this regard, Minister in charge of Civil Service and the Administration Modernisation said that that daylight saving changes will boost Morocco’s economic competitiveness through reducing energy consumption and facilitating transactions with foreign partners. This timing, he said, would enable Morocco to save 140 megawatts at peak time, which in turn will have a positive impact on the environment and on the investments of Morocco’s electricity utilities. SHARE THIS!
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Housing the Poor - the impact on Moroccan Property
Morocco’s housing deficit stood at roughly 608,000 units in 2011, with a significant shortfall in terms of the availability of government-sponsored accommodation, exacerbated in part by the Kingdom’s move to eliminate shantytowns and shift residents into proper housing.
Moving families out of the slums is a priority
The VSB programme has been most successful so far in the Oriental Region, located in north-eastern Morocco, where 83% of the targeted households have been demolished and families relocated. The Al Omrane-Oujda group, a real estate company placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Housing, has been one of the main players in the region in helping eradicate slums.
Also among the company’s main projects is that of the urban zone planned for the town of Al Aroui where 210 ha will be dedicated to housing. Some 36,000 housing units will be built in the area for about 180,000 inhabitants. Relocating families into the refurbished apartments planned by the government has been made possible thanks to a number of financing mechanisms. Fogarim, which has provided government-backed mortgages to people with low incomes since 2003, has enabled 81,000 people to obtain their own home.
Among these, 15,200 households that have been relocated under the VSB scheme have benefitted from the Fogarim scheme. At the end of 2011, the credit distributed to these families accounted for around 11%, or Dh1.22bn (€109.3m), of total issued Fogarim credit.
However, the Fogarim programme currently faces a major challenge as a number of payment defaults have been reported in towns such as Oujda, Azrou and Rabat, where some households have failed to pay off their monthly instalments of around Dh1500 (€134). Authorities have asked banks for more time before taking judicial action again the loanholders, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance has put in place a new loan, the Fogarim-VSB, that specifically targets this segment of the population and lowers their monthly payments to Dh1000 (€90).
Morocco’s residential sector will continue to expand as the government pursues its objective of relocating people to newer, urban housing. Already some 4000 ha of land per year have been reclaimed for urban projects, with some 45% of this used for real estate, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. With the government planning to develop a further 70,000 ha, the sheer volume and scale of the government’s housing schemes should leave plenty of room for growth in real estate.
As evidenced by an increased demand for construction materials, including a dramatic 25% rise in cement sales, Morocco’s property sector is continuing to see steady growth thanks in large part to a strong emphasis on social housing – a segment that has consistently run a deficit of supply, thereby promising continued expansion in the years to come, Global Arab Network reports.
Residential property remains the real estate sector’s main driving force, accounting for around 67% of total sales. In 2011, prices increased by 3.4% compared to 2010 and the number of units sold on the market was up by 13.6%. According to the latest statistics released by Bank Al Maghrib for the last quarter of 2011, the volume of transactions in the residential property sector rose by 22.8%, mainly due to the increase in middle-income and high-end apartment and villa sales. In the last quarter of 2011, villa prices saw a year-on-year (y-o-y) increase of 4.2% and sales rose by 11.3%.
However, it was apartment sales that lead the sector, accounting for around 61% of total sales. Prices saw a y-o-y increase of 5.2%, while the volume of transactions rose by 25.7%. The majority of real estate activity comes from further along the socioeconomic spectrum, at the affordable housing end, which accounts for more than two-thirds of total residential demand.
