In its yearly report, the Moroccan indirect taxes and customs office (ADII) revealed a very good performance for the past year. Indeed, custom revenues surged more than 4% to stand at 90.5 billion dirham ($9.2 billion) in 2016 with 500 million dirham ($51 million) worth of confiscated goods.

The customs office attributes the increase to record imports revenues which stood at about 400 million dirham ($41 million).

In details, value-added tax (VAT) represented 57% of the revenues, ahead of domestic consumption tax (31%), import duty (11%) and domestic tax on gas pipeline (1%), which was the only one to decrease over the period considered, according the news website aujourdhui.ma, citing the report.

Data from ADII and reported by Morocco world news shows that more than 2.25 million counterfeited products (up 80% compared to the previous year), including 12.5 million cigarettes, 19 tons of rubber bags and 53 tons of drugs had been seized.

In 2016, customs revenues made up 39.7% of tax revenues.

Fiacre E. Kakpo