Growth at 4.9% in 2025: Morocco accelerates, but public investment does most of the work

Key Points

• Morocco’s economy grew by 4.9% in 2025, driven notably by the agricultural rebound and a sharp increase in gross investment.
• Gross investment contributed 5 percentage points to growth, more than the final growth rate itself, before the drag from external trade.
• This momentum appears closely tied to public investment, especially major infrastructure projects, as reflected in the strong performance of construction.
• Despite this boost, non-agricultural growth slowed from 5.1% to 3.9%, while household consumption rose by only 1.2%.
• The main challenge now is to bring forward a private-sector relay capable of creating lasting jobs, supporting consumption, generating tax revenue and sustaining growth once the public investment cycle loses momentum.

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The Details

According to the HCP, the Moroccan economy grew by 4.9% in 2025, compared with 4.4% in 2024. Excluding the exceptional post-Covid rebound of 2021, this is the best performance recorded since 2017.

Under the national accounts calendar, figures for the most recent year are always provisional. Those for the previous year become semi-finalized, while accounts for the year before that are finalized.

Growth for 2023 was revised from 3.7% to 3.8%. The most significant revision concerns 2024, with growth raised from 3.8% to 4.4%.

The 2025 Figures

In detail, agricultural value added rebounded by 8.2% in 2025, after a contraction of 5.7% in 2024. Given its weight, close to 10% of GDP, this rebound contributed roughly 0.8 percentage point to growth.

By contrast, growth in non-agricultural value added slowed from 5.1% in 2024 to 3.9% in 2025. This deceleration is all the more significant because it came amid particularly strong investment. It suggests that the current momentum remains concentrated, with limited spillover effects across the wider non-agricultural productive economy. This is a point worth noting.

Public Investment, the Main Growth Driver

Gross investment played a dominant role in the growth recorded in 2025. It rose by 16.3%, after an already strong increase of 13.9% in 2024. Its contribution reached 5 percentage points of growth.

In other words, the contribution of investment alone exceeded the economy’s overall growth rate. Part of this impulse was then offset by the negative contribution of external trade.

Official statistics do not make it possible to isolate public investment precisely from private investment. It is nevertheless reasonable to consider that a significant share of the increase in gross investment came from the public investment push, especially in the context of major projects and preparations linked to the 2030 World Cup.

The sector-by-sector breakdown supports this reading. Among the fifteen non-agricultural sectors, only three saw their growth accelerate in 2025: construction, trade, and real estate activities.

All other sectors slowed, with the exception of education, human health and social work activities, where growth remained stable.

This pattern points to growth strongly supported by public investment, largely concentrated in infrastructure and construction. It helps explain the strong performance of the construction sector, where growth exceeded 6% for the second consecutive year.

If productive private investment were rising significantly, one would normally expect to see a broader spread into industry, business services, digital activities, transport and, with some delay, household consumption. Yet household consumption grew by only 1.2%, while most non-agricultural sectors decelerated.

The Challenge After Public Investment

Public investment contributed significantly to growth, which stood at 4.9% in 2025. This rate can be considered very satisfactory in light of Morocco’s growth record. So where does the problem lie?

This level of growth, however, does not reflect the usual pace of the Moroccan economy. Over the past decade, excluding exceptional rebounds, Morocco’s growth has generally hovered around 3%, except when specific conditions were met, notably a sustained public investment effort.

In 2024 and 2025, growth was largely supported by public investment. In other words, it was driven by a public impulse financed through budget revenues, the resources of state-owned enterprises and, in part, debt.

This is where the main challenge lies. Public investment must now be followed by a private sector capable of creating lasting jobs, raising household incomes, supporting consumption, generating tax revenue, helping ease the debt burden and producing more added value.

Yet 2025 growth does not clearly show that relay emerging. Gross investment, largely fuelled in the current context by the public investment push, contributed 5 percentage points to growth on its own. At the same time, household consumption slowed, non-agricultural GDP decelerated and, within non-agricultural activities, construction continued to rise, both in terms of value added and job creation.

This confirms the direct impact of public investment on construction and sectors linked to major projects. It also shows that spillover effects on the rest of the productive economy remain limited.

This raises the question of what will drive growth once the public investment cycle loses momentum. Médias24 had already addressed this issue in a previous article. The 2025 figures give it renewed importance.

It is also worth recalling that public investment can facilitate and catalyze private investment by developing infrastructure and reducing certain costs linked to economic activity. But the emergence of a mature and robust private sector requires more than public capital spending alone. It also depends on competition, better allocation of resources, especially financing, taxation, and the quality of the regulatory and institutional framework.