House of Representatives Unanimously Adopts Five Government Bills and One Parliamentary Bill
The House of Representatives adopted unanimously on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, five Government Bills covering mediation and arbitration, marketing of agricultural products, securities lending, microfinance, and joint-stock companies. In addition, the House also adopted a parliamentary bill on nurseries. The adoption of the bills took place in two plenary sittings chaired by Speaker of House of Representatives Habib El Malki, with the participation of Minister of Justice Mohammed Ben Abdelkader and Minister of Economy, Finance, and Administration Reform Mohammed Benchaâboun.
In his presentation of Government Bill 95.17 on arbitration and conventional mediation, Minister of Justice Mohammed Ben Abdelkader noted that the Bill is part of completing the implementation of the legislative scheme to reform the justice system and modernizing the legal arsenal regulating business and affairs. The Minister noted the importance of alternative means in resolving conflicts, particularly mediation and arbitration.
The Bill enacts enlarging the scope of internal mediation to cover the conflicts of civil nature and not subjecting the arbitrator to the control of any judicial authority. The Bill also sets out the possibility of concluding agreements on arbitration and conventional mediation using a sample electronic mail dedicated to this purpose, following the laws in force.
Government Bill 37.21 enacting special measures to the direct marketing of fruits and vegetables produced under agricultural aggregation enables wholesalers accredited by the competent authorities to commercialize fruits and vegetables produced under agricultural aggregation projects directly without going through wholesale markets. It also enables small-scale aggregating farmers to improve their products and access modern marketing methods. The Bill also defines the requirements and modalities of granting licenses.
Minister of Economy, Finance, and Administration Reform Mohammed Benchaâboun presented Government Bill 83.20 enacting provisions to securities lending. In his presentation, the Minister noted that our country had made enormous strides in recent years in reforming the local stock market, which has built a strong and shielded financial system.
The Bill introduced several updates that include the imperative provision of guarantees, enlarging the scope of mediation in securities lending operations, and extending the list of individuals and instances allowed to benefit from loans. The Bill also enacts generalizing the receivable bonds in securities lending operations to include all the legalized financial instruments.
Government Bill 50.20 on microfinance is part of pursuing the inclusion of microcredits in the financial sector and consolidating their governance. It aims essentially at broadening the scope of activity of this sector to include microfinance. Accordingly, the Bill includes new provisions, among which fixing the maximum amount of microcredits by decree, outlining the regime of settling microfinance associations, establishing a unique representation of the microfinance sector, and adapting its functioning modalities to the banking laws.
Government Bill 19.20 amending and supplementing Law 17.95 relating to joint-stock companies and Law 5.96 on general partnership companies, limited partnership companies, companies limited by shares, limited liability companies, and joint-venture companies comes to ameliorate the quality of the business climate and promote investments. The Bill also aims to remedy the impacts of discrimination within enterprises by gradually entrenching parity between men and women, encouraging entrepreneurial initiatives, easing enterprises' access to the securities market, improving governance, and reinforcing transparency for joint-stock companies. It also intends to generalize the audiovisual communication means permanently in all meetings of administrative and governance organs of the said companies.
During the second sitting, Rep. Mina Talbi of the Socialist Group presented a parliamentary bill amending and supplementing Articles 9 and 24 of Law 40.04 operating as the statute of private nurseries, enacted by Dahir 1.08.77 of October 20, 2008 (Choual 20, 1924). The Representative noted that the Bill introduces amendments to the statute of private nurseries. The amendments intend, on the one hand, to force nurseries to provide parents with copies of insurance contracts and to, on the other hand, raise the fines for the non-compliance to insuring all the children at the institution. In addition, the amendments also cover holding the administrators of private nurseries accountable for any accident that occurs to any child found uninsured.