RABAT- Former Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane expressed his pride in his decision to deregulate fuel prices during his tenure, considering that this “saved Morocco from the fate [financial collapse] of other countries such as Egypt and Tunisia.”
Amid a PJD party gathering last Thursday, Benkirane urged the party’s members to have “the courage to defend” what his government had achieved.
He said he “had done things no one else in the same position had the courage to do.”
Benkirane added, “I received commendations from all over the world because of the actions I took. If we had not removed fuel [charges due to subsidy] from the budget, the state would have gone bankrupt.”
He added, “When we came to the government, we found that fuel drains 40 billion dirhams from the budget, while the director of the latter told us that she did not have the tools in the treasury to control the subsidy [who benefits from it the most], so I decided to cut the subsidy.”
“With all modesty, I saved Morocco’s budget. I raised fuel prices on you, but I saved Morocco’s budget,” Benkirane stressed.
The Moroccan Times.
