Report: Tax Revenues Strengthen the Financial Capacity of Local Authorities in Morocco
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stated in a recent report that property taxes are the primary source of tax revenues for decentralized administrations, both local and regional, in Morocco, Mauritius, Eswatini, and South Africa.
In the report titled “Public Revenue Statistics in Africa 2025: Similarities and Specificities in African Public Revenue Classification Systems 1990–2023,” the organization noted that property taxes account for the bulk of local tax revenues collected in South Africa, Eswatini, and Mauritius, and represent over 80% in Morocco.
In contrast, the source indicated that local government revenues in Nigeria primarily stem from income taxes, while in Somalia, they derive mainly from goods and services taxes.
Regarding the distribution of taxes by administrative level, the OECD explained that local and regional administration revenues accounted for 3% of total tax revenues in Morocco in 2023. Somalia had the highest proportion in Africa at 33%, followed by Nigeria at 12.2%.
Meanwhile, non-tax revenue sources for countries such as Morocco, Cape Verde, Ghana, Uganda, Mauritius, and Gambia were primarily interest and dividends in 2023.
During this period, grants served as the main source of non-tax revenue in countries like Ivory Coast, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Senegal, even though they provided less than 50% of this revenue. In Mauritania and Tunisia, rents and royalties were the primary non-tax revenue sources, but these also represented less than half of the total non-tax revenues, according to the organization.
The report highlighted that in eight of the countries studied, non-tax revenues from sales of goods and services and collection of administrative fees constituted at least 1% of the GDP in 2023. This includes Cape Verde (4.2%), Egypt (1.1%), Ghana (1.4%), Morocco (1.1%), Mauritius (1%), Mozambique (1.5%), Seychelles (1.9%), and Somalia (2.2%).
The report demonstrates that the ratio of taxes to GDP varied in 2023 among African countries, ranging from 2.9% in Somalia to 34.0% in Tunisia, with South Africa, Morocco, Seychelles, and Tunisia registering ratios exceeding 25%.
This ratio has significantly increased for Morocco from 20.3% to 26.5% between 2000 and 2023, indicating a net increase of 6.2 percentage points during this period. The highest ratio recorded was in 2022 at 29.9%.
