A recently conducted survey covering different social categories found that 89% of Moroccans back open borders in Algeria and believe that closer economic cooperation is the way forward to resolve political disputes, the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis said. More than 1200 people took part in the survey, which revealed a strong popular support for regional integration in the Maghreb, a region that loses 2 percentage points of GDP growth due to closed borders. Other participants said the Maghreb integration failed due to the fear of political openness by some countries, in an allusion to Algeria’s state-controlled economy. The state of trade between the five AMU countries, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, does not exceed 3% of total Maghreb trade. The lack of regional economic integration in the Maghreb costs 2.5 points of GDP growth for each of the five states, and deprives the region of 220,000 job opportunities annually.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 26, 2020 12:33 UTC