Interview:Omar Kabbaj What can be done to increase the attractiveness of Casablanca as a travel destination? OMAR KABBAJ: Casablanca is the first destination in Morocco for business and cruise tourism. It is also the third tourism destination overall after Marrakech and Agadir. However, despite its mythic name – once featured in a cult movie – strong international competition in urban…
Interview:Mohammed Fikrat What investments are needed to help the development of an independent sugar value chain? MOHAMMED FIKRAT: The Moroccan sugar value chain plays a major role in the economy. It contributes to food safety by ensuring a constant supply to meet local demand. Many investments have been pursued since 2008 to boost the sector’s performance. Our main challenge and objective…
Interview:Ahmed El Bahri What challenges do you identify in the upcoming years for the health sector in Morocco? AHMED EL BAHRI: Access to health care has been a constitutional right since 2011, and the government has set a target of 3300 doctor graduates per year by 2020 to address the needs of the population. Despite efforts made by the public sector, this target is unlikely to be reached…
Interview:Nadia Fassi-Fehri With the shift from voice to data, what are the sources of revenue being explored by operators? NADIA FASSI-FEHRI: The shift to data is one of the major transformations that the telecoms sector is undergoing in Morocco and worldwide, but our philosophy remains the same. Inwi anticipated this change, and as one of the first companies to launch a solid and efficient…
Interview:Hervé Biausser What challenges is Morocco facing in training qualified engineers to enter the workforce? HERVE BIAUSSER: Morocco is facing several challenges. The first is a numerical challenge: Morocco needs more engineers of all types. Despite the quality of graduate programmes in the country, the country’s higher education system does not supply a sufficient number of engineers.…
All political and social reforms and all development initiatives are basically designed to preserve the dignity of citizens. Setting up institutions, no matter how important they may be, is not an end in itself. By the same token, economic growth can only be significant if it contributes to improving people’s quality of life. Indeed, despite the development our country has achieved, it makes me…
With the overhaul of the CSE’s board, the market is set to move forward in terms of product availability, regulation and international best practices. To better understand the demutualisation, a brief history of the stock is needed. Created in 1929, the CSE saw a lot of companies going public in the 1970s, in the wake of the “moroccanisation”. In the 1990s the first reforms were undertaken to…
Driven by the goal of becoming an economic and financial centre for investors and international institutions, Morocco is today proud of the achievements of CFC. It even exceeded Johannesburg on the Global Financial Centers Index (GFCI) in 2016. CFC ranked 33rd out of 86 cities worldwide, against 44th in 2015, ahead of Johannesburg at 51st. Nearly six years after its creation, CFC is considered the…
The implementation of the various constitutional reforms of 2011 continues, including many significant changes related to civil society’s participation in political debates. In this regard 2016 constituted an important milestone. At the local level, Organic Law No. 111-14, relating to the regions, which entered into force on February 18th, 2016, provides that citizens and associations residing and…
Morocco’s large diaspora, estimated to comprise up to 15% of the population, has changed considerably since the Second World War when blue-collar workers moved to Europe to help rebuild. Indeed, today the population of Moroccans living abroad increasingly comprises highly-educated young professionals. Demographics Recent estimates have put Morocco’s diaspora population at between 4m and 5m, or…
