 أنا كرولين فرش أنا أدوثر من جيب C&N العربية وفي حالة العربية في جيب C&N اليوم هو أمرنا لتحدث مع جيب المرقع عبد العلاح بن كيران وهي جيب جيد للجميع لكن for those who don't know him I would like to give some points or special issues about him or some comments about him he assumed his current position in 2011 prior to that he was the secretary general and is still the secretary general of the justice and development party which is the conservative Islamic party he assumed this position in the party as of 2008 he has assumed several positions in the political and party circles in Morocco some of the most significant issues related to him is that he is very very attached to his mother he loves his mother yes I think she is fit to be a chief of government yes yes I heard that she is 19 years old well she could have been a chief of government much better than me Mr. Ben Kiran is described by some of the observers as a conservative but an open minded person who hears and adheres other points of views let me start off sir with a question if you were to mention three issues that are sources of pride for you as of the assumption of this position of chief of government of Morocco what would you say they are in the name of God the most merciful the most compassionate I would like to describe the process of how I assumed this position of chief of government but I will restrict myself to your question the government program or plans of action are very broad and in Morocco we have what we call the appointment by the king and the prime minister is appointed by the party who has won the elections it might be the secretary general or another person and the king has chosen the secretary general there is another means of appointment which is appointment by the parliament where the parliament would vote on the person and this takes place usually two months after the appointment of the king I held various discussions with various guests who came to understand who came to discover who this chief of government were and all their discussions were focused on the main issues that I would be taking up they were always asking me that question so I had to come up with three main points to answer their queries the first idea is the following an attempt to rectify just a macroeconomic situation in Morocco I found that the budget I found out that the budget is getting stifled because of a various host of factors mainly related to the price of oil that change regardless of the situation of countries and individuals yes of course this can be also applied to your government now let me go back to the price of the oil it was 61 61 dollars the battle today but when I was appointed it was 110 and we budgeted on the basis of 105 and any increase would cost us 600 dirhams or 60 million dollars around the year when the price of oil went up by a single dollar so our budget was stifled and it was under a lot of stress and it needed amendment and adjustment yes that if you are going to grade yourself from 1 to 10 how would you grade yourself on that respect I would say 8 to 10 and I say that modestly because we were able to lift subsidies to the fuel sector and in the first year we used to subsidize various items by 57 million dollars and this year it's only 23 so as of 2012 to 2015 we were able to bring it down by 10 billion dollars in over those years and this is very important now the second main issue alright the second main issue is the following I found that contracting contracting business was quite profitable but they were heavily burdened because of the red tape because of bribes because of various judicial procedures and I am convinced that contracting is the main core element of economy if we don't have a vibrant contracting sector our economy would not flourish and we use we use French in Morocco and we said we need to facilitate the life of the enterprise which means we need to facilitate life to the enterprises and to the business and over those 2 years we were able to gain 26 positions ranking ranking the international ranking we were able to assume a better position in terms of contracting and enterprise business I've said we have a stake but we can also think of ourselves as a merchant person as a trader and that's how I thought that we should deal with the contractors we should give the contractors their right and we cannot put certain conditions on them to have a certain amount of liquidity or this or that it is up to the contractors to decide what they would do with their own liquidity the state should deal with the contractors on that basis the fuel tradesmen owed us a lot we borrowed a lot of money from them and now we have settled all our debts to them after the assumption of my position I have to recognize or confess to you that before assuming my position I had no idea whatsoever about the details and I was given the details slowly and I learned that persons fuel tradesmen would give taxes to the state and they would only regain it once they sell their fuel and I thought that was not acceptable we needed to give back the right to the tradesmen and you know how government work goes we start raising our voices and demanding this or that but it only takes at least a year or more to achieve 2012 so you have been able to achieve things yes ma'am yes ma'am I have started to reap the fruits of my efforts the businessmen or tradesmen did not expect to regain those taxes that they had paid which are around 200 million dollars and we have agreed with them that we will settle or get rid of it gradually this means that Moroccan contractors feel that the government is changing not in terms of funds available but in the means that or measures sir how would you grade yourself for this second achievement from 1 to 10 I think 6 out of 10 alright and I'm here I'm a little bit lenient while you're quite modest sir you're not giving yourself very high grades and maybe it should have been 5 out of 6 is Mr Ben Kiran the third point or the third main point frankly speaking that we say the following we know that following independence and because of the occupation in the previous parts we know that the strong people the strong men and the people who surround them meaning tradesmen as well as opposition or so called opposition all of them brought the ranks together and got the profit and benefited from the situation but that left out a huge segment of the society on its own and that segment I mean represents the poor people who had to deal and to manage their own affairs on the basis of selling out their own minimum and minimal positions and we thought that it is not fair and it is not logical to leave them to their own devices and that we need to take care of them in order to re-establish balance to the society so we talked about balancing economy balancing contract the contractors and businessmen segment and then balancing the entire society so we started to we raised grants to the students by around 35% this is something that was unheard of for 40 years or more we also took care of the retired people through the pension fund by virtue of law the retirement or the pension was 7 dollars a month and that meant that it was impossible for them the retired people to live on that allocation so I had to deal with the minister of finance and to discuss this issue with them and the minimum retirement pension was raised to 100 dollars a month this is a good number in Morocco well yes sir from 7 to 100 it's a good raise yes ma'am we found that were some medications were overpriced and we lowered those prices and we for example if we buy those medications as the government the medications would be given to us at a much lower price so we had to reduce the prices because those prices were given to the citizens at a much higher barum or level than given to us so we needed to lower it for everyone not only for the government then we turned to the windows to the workers segment and there are the daily workers and we had to cater for their life support once they stop their work as a result of an injury so again I say windows of those daily workers suffered a lot and we needed to focus on them and take care of them because these windows would not be able to work after the injury of their workers of their husbands and we decided that we needed to allocate certain funds to them and that might come up to $100 a month and we took up similar measures to help the society at large and we tried our best the workers the students and we also ensured the medical insurance for all students all our students have free medical insurance till the age of 26 26 yes yes they have this free medical coverage so we did this gradually let me add some liberalization of the economy when I assumed power or my position I found out that only physicians can invest in the health sector and if you are not a physician or a doctor you would not be able to invest or open up clinics or do this or that I thought that I needed to change this this issue has been on the table for 10 years and no one was bold enough to deal with it I sent the minister of health who used to be a communist and he is still part of our party but the communist party which has changed its name so he is bold and he was able to confront that issue and to open the box and discuss that very thorny issue and I supported him so this is how I worked I have always believed that the government in Morocco and in many other countries undertake tasks that should not be their responsibility they started to do that because the community or the society was weak to start off but later on things should have changed the government should assume tasks that citizens cannot assume it is much better for citizens to assume their tasks and the government would be there to coordinate, to follow up and not to achieve the government should not become the professor, the teacher the physician the farmer and the tradesman because the government does badly at all of these tasks very badly and this means that the society is deprived of excellent services if you are a headmistress of a school and you report directly to the owners of the school you will excel at your work but if you are a headmistress at a public school you will not do anything you will just await instructions if these instructions come to you alright sir let's go into the domestic affairs if you allow me to focus on this issue before we talk about regional affairs the directorate for planning and the statistics department in Morocco expects a growth of 4.8% in the economy compared to 2.6% now we are in the midst of 2015 are you satisfied with the results that the economy has achieved in Morocco and you expect that it will come up to the expected figure when it comes to development and growth I think yes this is highly possible we might even go beyond it and we can even achieve 5% but let me tell you the following when I assumed my position that the budget deficit was around 7.1% according to our own calculations 7.7% according to the IMF figures and we did not know what to do we wanted to reduce the investment budget on the basis of the measures that I have mentioned to you this year it will be 4.3% and the budget deficit we reduced it to 5.2% then 4.9% and this year we will reduce it to 4.3% and we hope that within 2 years it will be 3.5% which is the minimum accepted but I have to acknowledge that this is not my own making I contributed to this it is God's will that has served our objectives and I mean by that rainfall because we know that it is very important for us to see rain in Morocco it is good for our economy and for our psychology and over the last few years we saw a lot of rainfall the governor said that if you want to rule Morocco you need to make sure that there is rainfall and thanks God we did have rainfall another God's gift was the drop in the price of oil of course the Gulf people are not happy with it but we were very happy with the fact that the prices of oil went out from 110 to 105 and then it is 50 and 60 that was God's gift to us that helped us investment has gone up savings also have gone up we had 3 months of savings and now it is 5 months or more per year for our government my following question is related to unemployment you have achieved 9.9% figure as the minimum unemployment figure in Morocco are you optimistic do you think that you will maintain this figure taking into consideration that that some unemployed people have started to shift towards terrorism and joining ISIS firstly I do hope that that figure is 9.9 well sir this is what is the figure that I have read that is published ma'am if this figure is correct I am more than happy I think that unemployment is higher than 9.9% however this is not the source of my concern what really makes me worried is that till now we were not able to find appropriate method or methodology that would enable us to come out of unemployment logic it is not a matter of figure a certain figure unemployment is in the frame of mind a person who wants to work and does not find appropriate work to cover basic needs is something that we need to work on we have been trying to find that idea that methodology I think that the means to solve unemployment are there we have tried or the previous governments have tried but those means did not succeed as expected we tried to encourage people to go towards investment in private entrepreneurship or projects that did not succeed now your second part of the question to link the unemployment to terrorism I don't think so those who went or were attracted by external terrorist groups are not necessarily unemployed people they do work but they conduct minimum standard of works and I think that the government should take care of them in Morocco there was a conflict over power at a certain point of time conflict over power absolute power in general and then there was a conflict over capabilities authorities and the government wanted to keep all those authorities that the government has even included the opponents who threatened its authority our wages in Morocco are among the highest salaries in the Arab world if the Egyptians know that a Moroccan physician starts off with $1000 a month they would be extremely amazed because I heard that in 2011 the Egyptians wanted the physicians to have a minimum of 1000 pounds Egyptian pounds in Egypt while they start off with $1000 in Morocco some of our professors in the universities have $6000 a month which is close to what a minister gets so what I'm trying to say is that our elite our educated people have good salaries and a teacher in a higher school get $1500 a month sir if the government pamper its citizens to that extent what is the problem? well no no no we don't pamper all categories only the elites sir why does Morocco expert a lot of numbers of those terrorists well you know what ma'am we had an impressive number well first let's say that we are around 30 million people in Morocco and those who went to various terrorist organizations do not go beyond 1000 of course 1000 is a big number but and of course it is mainly linked to unemployment and to the marginalization this marginalized category was not even catered for in an appropriate manner from a religious point of view even that's why they termed extreme and they found that extremism expressed their desires and they were and this is quite unacceptable of course often he is even perfected he sees that the society is not for him he finds a group that calls and invites him to become religious and to wear a certain dress code that is different from our dress code you are in a humble manner and he feels that now he has significance and he can learn certain holy verses and even give a religious opinion and he has his own status in the society and this is a big transformation and these are the groups who have been neglected frankly speaking in Morocco and in the future there's a need to rethink this because when you are preoccupied with those who may face you in your attempts to governance you pay attention there and you overlook others but if you overlook others there are others other groups who will not ignore those groups and will attract them to their own projects this reason is it under lie what was said that there were certain constraints over certain freedoms in Morocco and that some journalists have been arrested in Morocco what is the reason behind these constraints imposed over freedoms this makes me laugh please share with us your laugh usually people laugh with me but this time I laugh alone those who say that there are constraints imposed over freedoms in Morocco the least to say is they are uninformed or unrealistic if not malicious previously I faced things that during years that we described the years of the years of the years of the years of oppression and maybe that was overrated or an exaggeration we don't even know what is written in the newspaper until we read it and on TV they say whatever they want nobody dictates what they should say true that people honor Islam and His Majesty the King sometimes they even attack Islam and even they mention His Majesty the King what we do is trying to follow up these things from a legal perspective other than that there are no constraints imposed on journalists true that some journalists face old problems that are being addressed and not in a 100% correct manner often some organizations would catch such an incident be it a legal organization or a freedoms organization they would exaggerate the problem we tell them okay you take this against us why don't you do this to other countries that are close to us they say those countries don't open the door at all but you open the door for us and you want to be ranked with other European countries in terms of freedoms therefore you are the appropriate party for us to monitor therefore this is a kind of penalty imposed on us I invite you and any of the participants to invite Morocco and to see on your own and to see the level of freedoms that prevail they are almost with no limits I have last question on the local level it is known that there is a division of responsibilities between the kingdom the institution of the king and the government this kind of sharing of responsibilities does it have cause any obstacles allow me once again this is an ongoing discussion in Morocco are the responsibilities in Morocco divided between the king and the chief of government or not I will tell you they are not divided when I read the constitution I find that the king is the head of state and the king is the Amir al-Mu'minin or the prince of the believers this is a title that has been inherited for centuries for those who don't know we are an almost religious state this is our structure when these Spaniards came to the Sultan and told him we will take part in the south where are your borders he says wherever you find a person who says that there is no god but Allah this is our borders this is our people this is how we are built since 12 centuries we are not only tens of years old the king is the head of state he is the Amir of the believers and he is the head of the cabinet where is this division that the chief of government is the chief of the administration but he is under the responsibility of the king this is something the world doesn't want to understand this existed in France they call it if the coexistence of cohabitation within the authority I tell you if we do this in Morocco then we will ruin the country I would like to explain you are Lebanese you are Jordanian you have identified but we have people from the Faraj Sur name in Morocco and they are an Andalusian family you have touched on a very sensitive issue this is being addressed by the Moroccan media yes true at some point I told you there is a conflict of power and then conflict over authorities or mandates I either go for the conflict over authorities or move in the direction of cooperation I decided not to go into a conflict and I understood that conflict is not in the interest of Morocco possibly in the media it is portrayed that I am always causing problems with the king but I wanted to put an end to this in the media image and I said that I am going to cooperate with the king God asked us to cooperate he did not ask us to struggle or to make cause conflict he said you need to cooperate and this is the position of the party yes it is my position as well as the party's position and also there are certain currents within the party however as secretary general this is my conviction with my position as well what use is it for you to be a chief of government I said I will work with the king and cooperate with him and I can do anything in favor of our society and we moved in this direction Morocco enjoys security and stability since 3 and a half years not one demonstration has come to the streets that is worth noting there were some demonstrations sometimes they are big sometimes they are small for certain organizations however they have taken note that this is futile and the society is content and unlike what people thought such harmony in the logic satisfies the Moroccans unlike what others think is this what you described was it the reason for the fact that you did not seek to have a parliamentarian monarchy in Morocco according to our education the parliamentarian monarchy means that the king is a king but he does not rule but for us this is useless we don't need such a king is this your position and the party's position and the Moroccan position we are a muslim people a king that has no powers our authorities and can interfere and to put things back on track in my opinion muslims do not need such a king he will not be useful for muslims this may be useful in Europe but not for us we want to have a king who fairly rules and an executive branch that helps him and a judicial authority that helps in this logic and decisions are taken in cooperation between the monarchial organization and the government mostly we have certain authorities and we do not go back to the king within our mandate and he has certain authorities that he doesn't have to refer to us but there are authorities and in which he has to inform us according to the constitution according to the constitution and according to the customs miss caroline you are a sister anyway sure i am she says listen to me is this possible to write all the details in a marriage contract marriage is built on complementarity and each party would exert all possible effort maybe the example is not very accurate but in governance you need a good faith you do it in good faith and you exert all possible effort because you want to serve our country in moroccan we say that we need to be flexible he says i want to teach you the local moroccan dialect and it is not useful for us not to be flexible we have very respectful ministers we had during the late 50s we had a chief of government who was appointed for only 6 months and he has always been respected we need to be patient of course my relation with the king is not always very good but we are patient sometimes we are patient because we want something positive and a positive impact for our society rather than become heroes in history and waste such an opportunity for our societies that would be in their service so since 2011 until now you are still in your position is this an indicator that there is a relative consensus an agreement and harmony between you and the king you are more harmonious than in this agreement had it not been for this harmony and agreement i wouldn't have worked had it not been for such harmony i wouldn't have stayed in position because what uses it i have two quick questions and i would like quick answers to open the floor for questions at the regional level i tried to ask some people from the maghreb about the questions that may be addressed to you one is about the cool relations between morocca and Algeria and the other is about the internal position the particular in morocco do you agree that this cool relation should stop shouldn't the relations improve on my side this is coming very late but i can say that such cool relations is part of the picture if you see a moroccan and Algerian who meet each other and who would shake hands you would be astonished the first time i met the president was at the funeral of and he greeted me very warmly and i greeted him warmly it was as if we are from the same family we are one people we are not even close people we are one people the people of morocca and Algeria then what is obstructing the improvement in relations mr. منكيران unfortunately there is a logic in politics that does not follow emotions or conversions and proximity when Algeria recently won a match in the world in the world cup in morocco people went on the streets but that happened in jordan and the gulf yes but there are no problems between Algeria and jordan but there are problems between us and Algeria they were not supposed to to cheer on the streets but they did shall we expect a meeting to happen soon meetings never stop with Algerians and the relations are not severed the borders are closed but the relations are not severed there is cooperation in several levels however unfortunately we have the problem of the desert the moroccan demand is to open the borders as we hope that this happens in the end you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your brothers are your brothers whether you like it or not Algerians are brothers and we are their brothers they are our neighbors and we are their neighbors however history will dictate to us to overcome this period and to surpass it and to restore normal relations this is my last question the morocco is participating in the Saudi operation why did the morocco decide to join the ranks of the resolute storm we have very close relations with the Gulf countries do you imagine that when they need us they wouldn't find us is this possible moreover 32 years ago the late Hassan the second said on the moroccan tv in response to the late Imam Khomeini he said the following if the haram is in danger we will declare the jihad morocans do not feel that they are morocans and they are far from Saudi Arabia morocans feel that so the arabia is part of them and they are part of it and they are part of all arab and Islamic countries 1973 we also supported Egypt and then we supported Jordan our martyrs are still buried in Syria and in Egypt isn't this the case Mr. Hamouz this is our nature we the morocans do not speak well or write well some people in the 11th write a lecture and they build a whole book of 1000 pages this is not what we do but we respond since Salahuddin Al Ayyubi we respond to requests there is a call by the king or the president of this country by saying that this country that this war should be led by the arab-islamic forces are you willing to join the forces that the king Abdullah II is calling for this is part of our holy Quran if there is a war among Muslims then you should try to reconcile them if we did this in Afghanistan then Americans wouldn't have interfered but we let the afghanis to kill each other if we did this with Saddam Hussein then Americans wouldn't have interfered and they confuse the whole and now we don't know what to do to exit the situation Arabs and Muslims when the right is obvious they should take the position of the right and to face the unjust party irrespective of the result otherwise the whole region will be on fire and you don't know what to face fine I will open the floor now for questions and I kindly request that the questions are brief if you see my English he says for this very very eloquent overview of the situation in Morocco I am an economist and you are quite impressive my question is regarding matters that are not within my area of expertise so forgive the simplicity of the question my name is Florent Saeed Ogden I am the chief economist of Arabia monitor you mentioned a certain I mentioned sir that the reason why some of the young Moroccans are joining efforts in the east that you find unfortunate doesn't have to do with unemployment that it has to do with other factors perhaps neglect and policy it would be nice if you could kindly shed further light on this issue which is on everyone's mind and if you could kindly point the way forward in terms of how the region should coordinate in order to come out of the fairly dark period we are entering you mentioned just now that it might be through better cooperation on things that are morally and objectively wrong thank you very much نجم نجم عدة أسئلة I'll show you collect several questions first Hi, I'm Yousef Global Shapers from Morocco thank you Mr. Brinkin for your inputs I prefer an English I prefer an English so everybody can understand my question is first of all congratulations for the last 3 years has been really positive as part of your reforms your hard work with the government and then with the king as well of Morocco my question is that all the reforms unfortunately were focused on the society either the very very poor or the very very rich what is your strategy as a government of the kingdom of Morocco to reform or to propose reforms for the I would say the middle class of Morocco which did not benefit sort of for so far from your governance effort thank you very much In this seminar you mentioned more than once the need to develop a partnership between the public and the private sectors what are your policies in this regard Morocco's economy is doing well compared to other parts of the region but our capital markets capital controls in Morocco can make the financial markets unattractive to foreign investors so I wanted to know if there are any plans to ease those restrictions on the capital markets I think now is the time for you to answer when I said that unemployment was not the reason I did not mean that unemployment did not play a role but I explained that our country and countries that are similar to us it's not about the fact that they did not do not find jobs but certain groups of the society are neglected for example in Morocco we have high class people live and we have buildings there are excellent deluxe buildings and there are moderate and therefore moderate buildings and we have people who live in shacks or in random areas they were neglected and they did whatever they pleased in return for things that they would give for small people with authority education is fine in the cities however in the desert areas we have six areas that don't have higher levels of education we have for example schools for girls that are five kilometers away they face difficulties commuting to schools and that's when they drop from schools in these modern policies if you cannot to express yourself through strikes through other forms of expression nobody listens to you this is the group that found itself in a world in which they were left on their own you can see a young man who is good looking and strong and he lives in shacks I found a family that is living in the shanty towns 16 meters no sanitation in the city in which I was responsible what happens this young man goes to the street and he finds people who are well dressed who are of the same age so he go up for terrorism this requires attention when the state heats on something it will be successful if you come to Morocco you'll find that the highways that are close to the streets you can find in Europe if you go to the train you can find trains that are close to the trains that are used in Europe this means that when we give attention to things then we are successful but we did not give enough attention to these groups and the time has come for us to give them our attention and how it can exit the current crisis I believe that it's difficult for me to answer this question alone I would only wish to contribute with a simple idea how did the region reach the situation if we can identify the reason then we can find a solution the reason for this situation is the fact that the region ignored its own people we are living in the 21st century but often with the mentality that is pre-islamic without any exaggeration we in Morocco and I said this yesterday we had a problem about the family law there was a social disagreement to the extent that our society was threatened of division of this law the late king Hassan II said no we would like to establish a committee of ulama on religious references this committee worked and after king Hassan II died the king Muhammad came and he said that as an amir of the believers I cannot make what is not correct in the terms of the Islamic sharia so our people feel that our dignity is maintained just like he drank juice in Ramadan and he said those who want to work let them work you can do this and those who want to fast they can fast the important thing is that you come to work on time that he happened during Ramadan may his soul rest in peace I am not against burqiba but this is what happened actually you cannot shock the society you need to respect their bad rounds the west must understand we are Islamic people no matter how they try we can dress in modern dress code we can wear even modern women clothes with time we don't know what will happen all this may happen but it is not possible to change us from within we are an Islamic ummah we have three more minutes she says we need to include everyone we need to include the majority when we think of our decisions and our policies and we have to be patient I only have three more minutes left I thought we had one more hour but you sir it is so interesting what you are saying but still we have to abide by the time I wanted to ask as for the question related to the middle class let me say the following we will not forget we shall not forget the middle class but let us be clear they feel ok be patient with us be patient with us until we rebuild a certain balance in our society yes we are thinking of it and we have a housing project for the middle class we are thinking of how to alleviate things for education alright sir so you are the middle class is on the program on the governments program yes alright the third question the private public partnership in the past the governments were not convinced of this and this is something that we are thinking of in our current government and we will start working on it as for the capital markets that is a very important question we are heading towards liberalization of the capital movements inward inbound outbound capital movements in the past we had certain administrative regulations and rules but this year we have allowed for example foreign positions abroad and we allowed to have 28 million derhams instead of 6 million derhams which is quite a success and only 2.1 billion derhams went to the government budget which means that this is a profit to the private sector and liberalization of the market is our future in Morocco sir towards the end I think that you are smiling so do you have a question on your mind alright Mr.Mousa I would like to say to the chief of the Moroccan government Mr.Binkiran I agree my name is not very Arab where does it come from sir this family name I really don't know alright I would like to thank all the audience I would like to thank all those who did put in questions to Mr.Binkiran and hopefully we will meet again thank you for your time sir