Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El-Othmani called Tuesday for developing the Conference of the States Parties to the Arab Anti-Corruption Convention and benefiting from international experiences.
He said this would give a greater impetus to the conference.
His comments were made on Tuesday during the opening of the third session of the two-day conference in the Moroccan capital, Rabat.
The conference was organized in the framework of a partnership between the Arab League and the National Authority for Integrity and the Prevention and Combating of Bribery in Morocco.
Corruption is one of the main obstacles hindering the development and stability of societies, said Othmani.
He stressed that it “leads to weakening development plans and public policies, preventing societies from attaining their goals, obstructing and delaying investments and resulting in poor infrastructure quality.”
He referred to a study carried out by the International Monetary Fund in 2016, according to which bribery alone was estimated at about two percent of the global gross domestic product.
Othmani also reviewed some of Morocco’s anti-corruption achievements, considering them “encouraging.”
But he said they remain insufficient.
Morocco has achieved a qualitative shift in the perception of corruption after being ranked 73rd out of 180 countries in 2019, an improvement from rank 90 in 2017, said Othmani, adding that it ranked the first in North Africa and sixth among Arab states.
Morocco has also improved in the World Bank’s annual Doing Business report of 2019, in which it was unprecedentedly ranked 53rd out of 190 countries.
Morocco topped North African countries, Othmani added, and maintained its second place in the Middle East and North Africa and the third in the African continent.
The conference was attended by delegations from Arab countries that are not party to the convention, namely Yemen, Libya, and Mauritania, in addition to a group of regional and international organizations, all acting as observers.
The Arab delegations have focused on following up on the implementation of the decisions issued during the second session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Arab Anti-Corruption Convention, which was held at the Arab League’s headquarters in December 2017.
They also discussed the report and recommendations of the third meeting of the open-ended committee, consisting of government experts for the state parties to the Convention.
