Algeria/Morocco: Crackdown on fuel smuggling essential

A recent crackdown on large-scale fuel smuggling on both sides of the Algerian-Moroccan border is essential to tackle contraband sales that have deformed markets in Algeria, which is having to import refined products and tackle subsidies, and in Morocco, which is losing tax and other revenues. There has been recent progress: the Casablanca daily L’Economiste reported from the kingdom’s north-eastern region in December on a mushrooming of legitimate service stations selling petrol and other fuel supplied by official sources – a reflection of a concerted crackdown on the smuggling networks that have long fuelled the region, most notably affecting Algeria’s province of Tlemcen and Morocco’s Berkane province and Oujda-Angad prefecture.