House of Councillors rejects amendment to lower customs duties on imported honey

The House of Councillors was able to reject the amendment proposed by the majority in the House of Representatives regarding a change in the 2025 Finance Bill, which aimed to reduce the customs duties on the importation of honey containers weighing more than 20 kilograms, from 40% to 2.5%.

The government retracted after accepting the proposal by Faouzi Lekjaa, the Minister Delegate for Budget, during a meeting of the Finance, Planning, and Economic Development Committee in the second chamber.

The amendment was introduced by the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises and was approved by a majority vote in the House of Representatives.

The “business” team justified this by saying that “this amendment aims to eliminate the reduction in the import duty applied to table honey in containers weighing more than 20 kilograms, as outlined in the bill as approved by the House of Representatives. This is to ensure the protection of national honey production, which is primarily produced by cooperatives.”

The team added in its amendment: “This comes especially in light of the challenges and difficulties faced by the sector and to avoid the dominance of imported honey in the national market due to the lower prices of imported honey.”

The approval of this article by the MPs sparked significant controversy, which continued due to hints from opposition factions, particularly the Justice and Development Party (PJD), that one of the investors in the majority is promoting imported honey in the national market. This led to Abdullah Bouano, head of the PJD group, stating, during the vote on the amendments in the first chamber, that this constitutes a “conflict of interest.”