“The Forsa program is a support program, Intelaka was an investment loan. The additional guarantees required by the banking sector within the framework of this program would hinder its effective implementation with very small structures”, notes the president of the Moroccan Center for Governance and Management (CMGM), Youssef Guerraoui Filali.
For this economist, VSEs and project leaders have a better chance of accessing financing and making their projects a reality under the Forsa programme, as no guarantee has been requested so far.
“The big difference between the two programs lies in the guarantees. Within the framework of Intelaka, the banks sought to have additional guarantees: collateral of the goodwill, mortgage of the goods of the projects… Which constituted an obstacle for the very small companies or the carriers of projects which wish to launch the first time,” he explains.
“The Forsa program is more of a social project, the objective is to support the greatest number of project leaders so that they can create added value and jobs”.
Indeed, the financing mechanism consists of a loan of honor of a maximum amount of 100,000 dirhams, including a grant of up to 10,000 dirhams. No less than 10,000 project leaders will thus be able to benefit from the Forsa program, for which the government will devote an envelope of 1.25 billion dirhams for the year 2022.
In addition to funding, the program provides a support system that includes e-learning training for all the projects selected, as well as a 2.5-month incubation for the benefit of the most promising projects, through the mobilization of regional incubators.
This support should, according to Youssef Guerraoui Filali, encourage several young entrepreneurs to develop their activity and capitalize on the expertise of incubators in the different regions of Morocco in order to identify market needs and optimize their productivity.
An effort to be made at the level of public procurement
But beyond funding and support, other obstacles hinder the effective implementation of funding and support programs and limit project development opportunities, starting with access to public procurement.
“In order to energize the national ecosystem and allow the emergence of new champions in all categories, it is necessary to review the public procurement decree, improve it to make it possible to operationalize the obtaining of purchase orders and certain public procurement contracts. by very small companies. Even today, the VSEs which represent the bulk of our entrepreneurial fabric do not have access to public orders, which prevents their emergence and their development”, regrets the president of the CMGM.
On the side of the private sector, this interlocutor considers that it is necessary to sensitize the various stakeholders through the CGEM to create mechanisms to allow large companies to collaborate and place orders with small structures and auto-entrepreneurs, the only way to diversify the creation of added value and jobs throughout the territory.
As for the current economic context, which is still gloomy, Youssef Guerraoui Filali assures us that the effects of the crisis should not constitute obstacles or deter young people from entrepreneurship.
“Despite all the economic disruptions at the international level and which obviously affect Morocco, many project leaders have been able to turn the crisis into an opportunity and achieve a double-digit growth rate in the midst of a pandemic, whether in the food sector, the e-commerce, new technologies. What is needed today is to look for sources of productivity and growth and to capitalize on the most promising sectors during this economic situation,” he concludes.
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