OFPPT Training Reimbursement: The CSF Path from Plan to Payment

How does OFPPT reimburse a training course?

By transfer order, at the end of a special training contract signed before the session. The company organises and pays for the training, proves it, then claims back part of its cost; OFPPT reviews the claim and pays it.

OFPPT, the Office de la formation professionnelle et de la promotion du travail, is Morocco’s public vocational training office. Alongside its own institutes, it manages the continuing training of employees, and special training contracts (contrats spéciaux de formation, CSF) are the scheme through which it reimburses companies. Its CSF page sums it up in one sentence: to benefit from the scheme, companies must file a “Demande de Remboursement des Actions de Formation OFPPT”, a claim for the reimbursement of their training actions. Behind that claim lies a chain of three documents, which the procedures manual describes step by step. Each one conditions the next.

Your point of contact is the CSF management unit (Unité de gestion des CSF) with territorial jurisdiction, meaning the one that covers the place where the company is registered with the CNSS, Morocco’s national social security fund (May 2006 manual, procedures P 1.0 and P 2.0). That is where you file, in this order, the administrative file, the technical file and the financial file.

The legal framework is Law No. 60-17, which entrusts the management of continuing training to OFPPT and to a dedicated administrative unit, tasked with receiving applications, signing contracts, monitoring actions and checking them (art. 12 and 17). The law keeps the procedures manual for special training contracts in force until it is replaced by the manual provided for in its article 19 (art. 32). The May 2006 manual and its Amendment No. 2 (avenant n° 2) of 2 June 2014 were still among the documents OFPPT offered private companies in 2026: they are the texts we cite here.

The May 2006 manual, amended by Amendment No. 2 of 2 June 2014, remains the reference in force: Law No. 60-17 keeps the earlier manual until it is replaced (art. 32).

One practical consequence outweighs all the others: reimbursement is prepared before the training. A session delivered without a prior funding application falls under no contract. The financial file, however carefully assembled, will then have nothing to support.

Are your company and your training provider eligible?

The company must be liable for the vocational training tax and in good standing with the CNSS for that tax; the training provider must itself be eligible. Both are checked before the file is built.

The company

According to OFPPT’s Eligibility page, the CSF system is open to employers liable for the vocational training tax (taxe de formation professionnelle, TFP) and in good standing with the CNSS for that tax over the “TFP year”, meaning the period from 1 July of year N-2 to 30 June of year N-1. OFPPT checks this against data the CNSS updates every month. In practice, for a 2027 financial year, what counts is the regularity of declarations between July 2025 and June 2026.

OFPPT’s “Private companies” page adds two conditions: presenting a CNSS certificate showing that the company is in good standing, and operating in the sectors covered by the professional associations and federations that are ex officio members of the relevant GIAC. GIACs (groupements interprofessionnels à l’appui du conseil) are inter-professional advisory groups set up by employers’ professional organisations, usually by sector; they fund training engineering, the work that comes before the courses.

Large establishments, as defined by the manual, fall under a separate regime, with a technical committee of their own. This guide describes the procedure for private companies outside that category, which covers most SMEs.

The training provider

The manual requires the eligibility of training providers to be checked on the CSF portal before the technical file is even put together (procedure P 2.0). OFPPT’s portal user guide is explicit: for an open (inter-company) or on-site (intra-company) course, the provider’s CNSS number is entered, and an ineligible provider blocks the entry. Law No. 60-17 also entrusts training to providers qualified under conditions set by regulation (art. 9). The CSF manual accepts as training providers the company itself if it has the necessary skills, private consulting and training providers subject to the TFP and up to date with their declarations, and public bodies; third-party payment also requires a valid qualification label.

Our guide to OFPPT special training contracts for CEOs and HR presents the scheme from management’s point of view, including the questions a foreign group’s Moroccan subsidiary should ask; this guide follows the money, from the plan to the transfer.

What are the steps from training plan to payment?

Ten milestones spread over three calendar years: access opens in October of the year before the financial year, and the financial file is filed by the end of the year after it at the latest. In the table, N is the financial year in which the training is delivered; the deadlines are those published by OFPPT.

Confirm each of these deadlines with OFPPT for your financial year; unofficial sources quote others, which we do not use.

Access to the system

The administrative file comprises the company identification form (form F1) bearing the legalised signature of the authorised signatory, an extract from the trade register (model J) less than three months old, the document proving the signatory’s powers and a bank identity certificate. Under Amendment No. 2, these documents are supplied once, at the first filing or when something changes. The access certificate covers all the funding applications of the financial year and the diagnostic and engineering actions funded by the GIAC.

The plan and the funding application

This is the step that sets the rate. The manual defines planned actions as those entered in an annual training plan “necessarily derived from a training engineering study”. A plan derived from engineering that the relevant GIAC has not approved is treated as a set of unplanned actions. The gap between the two regimes, 70% and 40% under the reference rules, is therefore decided at the engineering stage, well before the first session.

The technical file for a planned action brings together the GIAC’s certificate of approval of the engineering, the report of the engineering action, and the plan itself: a summary sheet of actions and providers (model 1), an identification sheet per action (form F2) and a sheet per training provider (form F3). The management unit approves each action on the basis of its retained cost, then draws up the contract. How GIAC engineering and the CSF combine is detailed on our page OFPPT special training contracts (CSF) and GIAC funding.

How is reimbursement won or lost during the training?

Through compliance: the action delivered must be the one that was approved, with the planned participants, dates, venue and provider, and every change must have been reported before the start.

The model contract annexed to the manual sets four obligations for the company:

• appoint a training manager, the management unit’s contact for the delivery and follow-up of actions (art. 6);
• display the training plan on its premises, visibly for all categories of staff (art. 8);
• keep a file per action, with the signed attendance sheet, the programme, the evaluation sheets and copies of the proof of expenditure (art. 9);
• report any cancellation or change of dates, venue, provider or timetable through a notice (model 3); Amendment No. 2 sets this deadline at least 24 hours before the start. Without a notice, the action is not reimbursed (art. 11).

The attendance sheet deserves particular care. Under Amendment No. 2, it is signed by the participants, bears the stamps of the provider and of the company (model 5), and must be drawn up at the time of the training. It stays in the training file of the company and of the management unit, for checks on delivery. It cannot be rebuilt after the event.

An ACG session produces this evidence as it goes: invitation, QR-code attendance, test, end-of-session evaluation, numbered certificate, report. The sequence is described in before, during and after training. Confirm with OFPPT the attendance sheet format it accepts: stamped paper model 5, or a printout from electronic attendance records.

How do you file the financial file and follow the review?

By gathering the proof of delivery and of payment for each action, filing it with the management unit that received the funding application, by 31 December of year N+1 at the latest, then following the file through to the transfer order.

The financial file (list No. 4 of the manual, as amended by Amendment No. 2) comprises two families of documents:

1. Proof of delivery: the provider’s original invoice (model 4), the attendance sheet (model 5), the summary evaluation sheet of the action validated by the provider (form F4) and the certificate of delivery of the actions submitted for reimbursement (model 6). For in-house training, the original attendance sheet and a certificate from the company.
2. Proof of payment: a copy of the cheque, transfer order or bill of exchange, with the bank document that proves the debit, each copy marked “Conforme à l’original” (certified true copy) and stamped by the company.

The document-by-document detail, the cross-checks and the reasons files are returned are set out in our article CSF reimbursement file: supporting documents and checklist.

The review then follows a simple sequence. An incomplete or non-compliant file is returned on the spot, with a note of the missing documents. A complete file receives an acknowledgement of receipt. The management unit then issues the transfer order matching the contracts and the accepted modification notices, sends it with the detailed list of the actions reimbursed, and informs the company of the reason for any rejection. Amendment No. 2 sets thirty calendar days between the acknowledgement of receipt and the transfer order; beyond that, the management unit must justify the delay. It is a procedural rule, not a guaranteed payment date.

If the decision seems unfounded, the manual provides for a reasoned appeal to the regional CSF committee, through the management unit, within fifteen days of notification.

Why does the amount reimbursed differ from the simulation?

Because a simulation applies a rate to a quote, whereas OFPPT applies that rate to a retained cost, within a ceiling, on the participants actually present, and after checking every document.

Six mechanisms explain most of the gaps we analyse with our clients after notification:

• The retained cost is not the invoice. The manual calculates reimbursement on the retained cost set by the cost schedule (nomenclature des coûts) adopted by the regional CSF committee, by training field. All amounts are deemed to exclude taxes: the company pays all of the VAT.
• The ceiling is specific to the company. It depends on the declared TFP; the manual provides for a document giving the indicative ceiling to accompany the access certificate. Ask OFPPT for the scale that applies to your financial year.
• The regime of the action. Planned or unplanned, the reference rate is not the same (70% or 40%), and that regime was fixed when the application was filed.
• Absences. Reimbursement is made in proportion to the participants who actually attended against the participants planned (model contract, art. 14).
• Unreported changes. A change without prior notice costs the reimbursement of the action; data in the supporting documents that do not match the action sheet must be explained by a notice, which the management unit accepts or not (art. 10 and 11).
• Inspection. Total or partial non-delivery found on inspection can lead to a reduced or cancelled reimbursement, and amounts unduly received must be repaid (manual, section 7.6; Law No. 60-17, art. 29 and 31).

The reimbursement simulator gives an order of magnitude before ceiling; what goes into the retained cost, and what does not, is detailed in our article what training costs are reimbursable by OFPPT.

Before counting on a reimbursement

• The company’s eligibility for the TFP year is checked, with the CNSS certificate to hand.
  
• The access certificate for the financial year is obtained, with its indicative ceiling.
  
• Planned actions derive from engineering approved by the GIAC.
  
• The eligibility of each training provider is checked on the portal.
  
• Funding applications are filed on time, before any session.
  
• Every change is covered by a notice at least 24 hours before the start.
  
• Attendance sheets are drawn up and stamped during the training.
  
• The financial file is filed with the right management unit by 31 December N+1 at the latest.
  
• The budget shows the full cost and a simulated reimbursement, never an amount taken as certain.