Morocco Is North Africa's Most Open Economy — Ranked 54th, 72nd or 83rd, Depending Who You Ask
A Moroccan media report placed the country 54th out of 161 economies in a 2026 economic freedom ranking, with a score of 63. 74, attributing the figures to the Legatum Institute. That figure cannot. . .
A Moroccan media report placed the country 54th out of 161 economies in a 2026 economic freedom ranking, with a score of 63. 74, attributing the figures to the Legatum Institute. That figure cannot currently be reconciled with Legatum's published material. Its 2020 Morocco economic openness study, covering 157 countries, ranked Morocco 72nd; the Heritage Foundation's 2026 index ranks it 83rd. The rankings point in broadly similar directions and disagree on much of the detail — which is why investment data matters more than any headline rank. Moroccan media reported in mid-August that the country ranked 54th out of 161 economies in a 2026 economic freedom ranking, with a score of 63. 74 and the strongest position in North Africa, attributing the figures to the Legatum Institute. The attribution is difficult to reconcile with what the institute has published. Legatum's last readily available Prosperity Index is the 2023 edition, covering 167 countries. Its Morocco-specificEconomic Openness: Morocco Case Study, published in 2020, covered 157 countries and ranked Morocco 72nd overall and ninth in the Middle East and North Africa. Separately, the Heritage Foundation's 2026Index of Economic Freedomrates Morocco's economy "moderately free" and ranks it 83rd out of 184 countries. None of the currently available Legatum material reproduces the reported 54th-place ranking out of 161 economies. This is not a pedantic complaint. The three numbers imply three different relative positions, and an investor who reads only one of them gets a materially different picture of the country's regulatory environment. More importantly, the 72nd-place figure and the 83rd-place figure do not come from the same year or methodology, so they should not be treated as directly comparable rankings. What the Indices Actually Agree OnWhere the methodologies converge is more useful than where they diverge. In its 2020 Morocco study, Legatum found the country strongest in Market Access and Infrastructure, ranking it 64th and four places higher than a decade earlier. The report highlighted a competitive mobile market, improved internet access, and stronger transport infrastructure, including the capacity and quality of Morocco's ports. That last point is the one with a physical address: Tanger Med has become one of the Mediterranean and Africa's largest container hubs and an anchor of Morocco's positioning as an industrial platform between Europe and Africa. The port complex handled more than 10 million twenty-foot equivalent units in 2024. The weaknesses are also broadly consistent across sources. Heritage's 2026 assessment scores Morocco poorly on judicial effectiveness, government integrity, and labor freedom, while giving it much stronger scores for investment freedom and financial freedom. Legatum's 2020 study identified labor-market functioning and domestic market contestability as among the country's largest opportunities for improvement. Taken together, the indicators suggest that Morocco has built a relatively favorable environment for foreign capital and export-oriented investment while remaining considerably less competitive and efficient in parts of its domestic economy. That distinction is where the economics sit. Morocco has been notably successful at attracting export-oriented manufacturing — automotive assembly and components, aerospace, electrical systems, and wiring harnesses — much of it concentrated in industrial and free-zone ecosystems with regulatory treatment designed around international supply chains. According to Morocco's Office des Changes, merchandise exports reached about 456. 3 billion dirhams in 2024, against imports of roughly 761. 3 billion dirhams. Automotive exports were the country's largest export category, at about 157. 6 billion dirhams, followed by phosphates and derivatives at roughly 87. 1 billion dirhams and agriculture and food products at close to 87 billion dirhams. Passenger vehicles, fertilizers, and wires and cables were among Morocco's most important exported products. The New Investment Charter, operational since 2023, was designed to increase private investment, broaden its geographic distribution, and support sectors considered strategic to the country's development. What the rankings cannot tell you is whether a Moroccan firm without privileged access can enter a concentrated domestic sector, how long an administrative authorization takes in practice, how consistently regulations are applied, or what a commercial dispute costs to resolve in court. Those are the variables that determine whether openness to foreign investors becomes broad-based productivity growth, and they are measured imperfectly — or not at all — by composite indices. The country's macro numbers provide the backdrop. The IMF's April 2026 World Economic Outlook projected GDP of roughly $194 billion for 2026, growth of about 4. 9%, average inflation of around 1. 3%, and GDP per capita of roughly $5,100. Those are forecasts, not realized outcomes, and other institutions have since published somewhat lower growth projections. They are respectable figures for the region and unremarkable ones globally. Anyone citing a rank should say which index, which edition, which methodology, and how many countries it covers. Anyone making an investment decision should look at company formation, foreign direct investment, credit growth, sector-level concentration, market entry, regulatory execution, and judicial performance instead. Georges Auréole Bamba