Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture has issued a tender for a comprehensive study to reform the country’s Agricultural Investment Code — a foundational legal framework that has governed irrigation, land tenure, and private investment incentives in the sector since its adoption in 1969. The study carries a budget of 5.64 million dirhams and must be completed within eight months.
The code, published in the Official Gazette on July 25, 1969, consolidates 49 texts — including 17 royal decrees, 19 government decrees, and 13 ministerial orders — into a single regulatory framework that has long defined how public intervention and private investment interact in Moroccan agriculture. At the time of its creation, the sector was organized around state-directed food self-sufficiency and large-scale irrigation development. Over half a century later, the landscape has transformed fundamentally.
Agriculture now accounts for more than 30 percent of national employment and nearly a fifth of goods exports. Moroccan agri-food chains have integrated into global value networks, international competition has intensified, and demands for traceability, legal certainty, and environmental compliance have grown considerably. Free trade agreements, the dismantling of public trade monopolies, the generalization of social protection in rural areas, and the ratification of international environmental conventions have all created gaps between what the 1969 code prescribes and what the modern sector requires.
The reform study will unfold across three phases. The first involves a detailed inventory and diagnostic of all applicable agricultural legislation, with particular focus on identifying obsolete provisions and implementation gaps. The second phase will map inconsistencies and structural weaknesses in the current framework, developing recommendations through a consultative process with institutional and professional stakeholders. The third will produce concrete reform options and a coherent new legal architecture for each domain, benchmarked against international best practices and accompanied by a precise implementation roadmap.
The overhaul is designed to align the Agricultural Investment Code with the objectives of the Green Morocco Plan, the Generation Green 2020-2030 strategy, and Morocco’s New Development Model — modernizing a legal foundation that, while still central, has long needed updating for the realities of 21st-century agriculture.
