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FOM Newsletter April
2001
Morocco Week in Review
April 21, 2001
Drought
rattles Morocco's hopes for cereal crop.
King forms
Commission on status of women.
700 Jobless
High Degree Holders to be Hired.
Only
0.3 percent of Morocco's GDP go to scientific research, deplores an official.
Morocco's
phosphate group injects $ 80 million in environment protection.
Morocco
says 20 pct cereal lands lost to drought.
Morocco
to launch first economic census in May.
Islamic
bank lends Morocco $50 mln for oil imports
Morocco
gets ADB loan for airport extension.
Plus
de 7,5 millions de dollars de pertes à cause du piratage.
Drought
Destroys 20 PC of Cereal-Sown Areas.
L'agriculture
marocaine à la merci des pluies d'avril
Regions
and cities urged to compete for FDI
Morocco
to speed up liberalization of sugar sector.
Moroccan
firm building $20-mln oilseeds plant
Phosphate
exports earn Morocco $ 1.5 billion every year.
Morocco
- Oil & Gas : British Enterprise Oil wins a contract to drill in Morocco.
African
days festival opens Friday in Agadir
Drought rattles Morocco's hopes for cereal crop.
By Souhail Karam RABAT, April 19 (Reuters) -
Morocco's hopes for a big cereals crop this year have been damaged by a lack of rain in the past six weeks, farm ministry officials said on Thursday. "Around one million hectares out of the initial 4.8 million hectares sown was lost. No crop will be coming out of these lands," a senior Agriculture Ministry official told Reuters. Morocco has severe drought in the last two years, which has led to a near stagnation of its agriculture-based economy. This year's campaign had started well, said Bill De Maria, assistant director at the London-based International Grains Council (IGC), referring to abundant and widespread rains early on. But conditions had started to falter, he said. "Plants in March and April need enough sub-soil moisture to avoid an interruption in their growth," he said. Analysts said the impact of the drought was being felt rom the south and east of the country towards the central plains, where production is concentrated. "In the Gharb plain area, drought has begun to take its toll," an official at the private cereals traders group ANCL said. The Gharb plain is a highly fertile and important cereals producing region.
LACK OF IRRIGATION
The ANCL official dams were about 59 percent full, but that would not help because areas of high cereals production depended on rainfall and were not irrigated. Agriculture Minister Ismail Alaoui said cereals output was now expected to be between 5.0 and 4.5 million tonnes. But Alaoui's estimate, published in the Arabic-language daily newspaper Al Ittihad al-Ichtiraki on Thursday, was based on an earlier estimate that 14 percent cereals areas would be lost. The government had projected a harvest of 6.5 million tonnes in 2001, sharply up from 1.8 million in 2000. But the ANCL official mentioned a figure of a maximum 3.0 million tonnes. Morocco's imports for 2000/2001 stand at 5.2 million tonnes, including 4.2 million of wheat. The harvest season in Morocco starts in May. De Maria said the IGC's early wheat production forecast for Morocco was 2.5 million tonnes. "But in the light of the new developments we'll certainly revise down the figure," he said. Over the past 10 years, Morocco has been hit by cyclical drought with one dry year on average every two seasons. Agriculture accounts for up to 20 percent of the $36 billion Moroccan GDP and employs half of the 10.6 million workforce.
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987686009nL19286082
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King forms Commission on status of women.
King Mohammed VI has decided to appoint a Commission of religious scholars and civil society representatives to recommend changes in the personal status code (the moudawana), a text derived from Islamic law that determines women's rights. The decision, which came after a highly-publicized meeting between the King and a delegation of women's movement representatives, appears set to break the stalemate over a reform of the personal status code that was first proposed in 1999. That reform was effectively shelved after the fundamentalist movement and a coalition of women's groups organized massive demonstrations for and against the changes.
Key elements included:
(1) raising the age of marriage to 18;
(2) allowing women to marry without family permission;
(3) introducing legal divorce;
(4) making polygamy subject to the approval of the first wife and of the courts; and
(5) giving a divorced woman the right to half the joint property acquired during marriage.
An opinion poll conducted at the time indicated that a slim majority of Moroccans favored the changes taken as a package, except for allowing a woman to marry without family consent. (Source: Upline Securities) http://www.north-africa.com/one.htm
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700 Jobless High Degree Holders to be Hired.
RABAT - Morocco said Tuesday said that the public service will hire shortly 700 jobless holders
of doctoral degrees. It was decided to hire (in public administration) some 700 out of 1200 holders of doctoral or engineer degrees, Moroccan employment minister, Abbas Al-Fasi announced.
The government made its utmost to reach a final agreement on the hiring of the jobless graduates, he said, adding related dossiers were submitted to the concerned departments and public administrations.
http://www.map.co.ma/english/dispatches/national_news.htm
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Only 0.3 percent of Morocco's GDP go to scientific research, deplores an official.
Economics, 4/17/2001
A Moroccan official has deplored that only 0.3 to 0.4 percent of Morocco's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are allotted to scientific research. The weakness of the funds injected in scientific research are a major problem, Omar Fassi Fihri, Secretary of State for Scientific Research, said, lamenting that even the available material and human resources are not exploited adequately. The official, who was interviewed by local Al-Alam daily, called for increasing the funds earmarked to scientific research to at least 1 percent of the GDP by the end of the present decade. Fihri noted that the Moroccan government has devised a strategy to promote scientific research. The strategy, to be implemented part of the five-year development plan, will seek to enhance financing the activity and identifying priority fields for the country's development.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010417/2001041740.html
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Morocco's phosphate group injects $ 80 million in environment protection.
Environment, 4/20/2001
The Moroccan phosphates corporation (OCP) said it will inject nearly $ 80 million (800 million Dirhams) in environment-related projects to be implemented over the few coming years. Part of the plan, a vast program for the reforestation will be carried out in OCP's mining areas, Mohammed Berrada, head of the state-owned company, told Al-Ittihad Al-Ichtiraki daily. The projects are part of the group's strategy to fight pollution and be environment-friendly.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010420/2001042027.html
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Morocco says 20 pct cereal lands lost to drought.
RABAT, April 18 (Reuters) - Morocco said on Wednesday it had lost more than 20 percent of cereal-sown lands due to drought, raising fears of a shortfall in output and negative impact on economic growth for the third year in a row. According to an agriculture ministry statement, carried by the official MAP news agency, 980,000 hectares (2.42 million acres) out of a total 4.8 million hectares were destroyed up to April 13. The ministry had said earlier this week that 14 percent of the sown land had been lost mainly in the south and east of the country, which are not main producing areas. "The new element is that drought impact started stretching from the south and east towards the central plains, where most production concentrates," a private cereals miller said. The ministry said 10 percent of the sown land in the fertile Chaouia-Doukkala area was destroyed. "If other areas such as Gharb, Zaer and Saiss start feeling the impact, then we might re-live last year's disaster," the importer added. Over the past 10 years, Morocco has been hit by cyclical drought with one dry year on average every two seasons. The government had projected a harvest of 6.5 million tonnes of cereals in 2001 sharply up from 1.8 million in 2000, when it was 36 percent of the average of the previous five years. It had also forecast a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rise of 8.1 percent this year for the economy, in which agriculture accounts for up to 20 percent of the $36-billion Moroccan GDP and employs half of the 10.6 million workforce. The harvest season in Morocco starts in May.
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987603277nL18157181
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Morocco to launch first economic census in May.
RABAT, April 17 (Reuters) - Morocco will launch early next month its first ever economic census on behalf of state and private firms, the official MAP news agency reported on Tuesday. It said the results of the 15-month census were expected by late 2002. The census would exclude informal business activities and those in the process of closure or liquidation.
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987530205nL1754782
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Islamic bank lends Morocco $50 mln for oil imports
RABAT, April 16 (Reuters) - The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has granted Morocco two loans worth $50 million to help finance crude oil imports from the bank's state members, a senior energy ministry official said on Monday. The loans of $25 million each would finance imports by oil refinery Samir through BMCE Bank and BCM bank. Morocco, which produces no oil, imported 14.7 billion dirhams ($1.34 billion) worth of crude oil last year, up 64.5 percent in value. The North African country's main suppliers are Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran. ($1=10.973 Moroccan dirhams)
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987433096nL16427994
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Morocco gets ADB loan for airport extension.
Economics, 4/19/2001
The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (ADB) Wednesday approved a loan of 52.70 million Units of Account (about 78 million Euro or 68.11million dollars) to finance the improvement and extension of some airports in Morocco. An ADB release said the project seeks to improve the capacity of the Mohammed V airport in Casablanca as well as air navigation security within Morocco's flight information region. It would thus help ensure the flow of traffic with optimal security and in accordance with relevant International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards. The project involves the construction of the departure terminal at Casablanca airport, strengthening of the main runway at Mohammed V airport and construction of a second identical runway, while expanding the capacity at Mohammed V airport to 8 million passengers in 2005. Furthermore, it seeks to increase security and safety in Moroccan airports by procuring equipment prescribed by ICAO. The loan would finance part of the foreign exchange cost of the project whose total cost is estimated at 98.07 million Units of Account (about 123.63 million US dollars).
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010419/2001041925.html
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Plus de 7,5 millions de dollars de pertes à cause du piratage.
Panafrican News Agency (Dakar) April 18, 2001 Rabat, Maroc
Les pertes dues à la duplication frauduleuse des logiciels informatiques au Maroc sont chiffrées à quelque 7,5 millions de dollars, selon une récente étude menée par le cabinet d'audit international Price Waterhouse. Microsoft, le leader mondial d'éditeurs de logiciels, est "le groupe qui paie le plus lourd tribut financier au piratage des logiciels", relève l'étude publiée par le journal "L'Economiste". Le président de Microsoft pour la région Europe, Moyen- Orient et Afrique, M. Jean-Philippe Courtois, a reconnu, dans une déclaration au journal, l'ampleur des pertes engendrées par le piratage des logiciels, qualifiant un tel acte de "crime qui se produit tous les jours". La duplication frauduleuse des logiciels au Maroc "reste à des niveaux très élevés, 70%", a ajouté M. Courtois, saluant toutefois les efforts déployés par les autorités marocaines en charge de la répression des fraudes. Malgré l'ampleur prise par ce fléau, M. Courtois a affirmé qu'"il n'y a pas eu de recul de l'investissement informatique et encore moins celui des achats informatiques" dans un pays qui connaît un engouement sans précédent pour les nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication. Avec 38 filiales réparties dans 40 pays et 6.000 employés, la région Europe, Moyen-Orient et Afrique de Microsoft dégage 5,2 milliards de dollars de chiffre d'affaires (hors activité avec les assembleurs des PC), soit le tiers du chiffre d'affaires global du groupe, et constitue la plus importante en couverture géographique.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200104180566.html
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Drought Destroys 20 PC of Cereal-Sown Areas.
RABAT - Drought has destroyed 980,000 hectares of Moroccan cereal crops, some 20 percent of the total cereal-sown area, the ministry of agriculture, rural development and water and forests said in a report. The report, assessing the current agricultural campaign up to April 13, said southern and eastern Moroccan regions were most severely affected. Some 4.8 million hectares were sown this year. The harvest season in Morocco starts in May. The government had projected a harvest of 6.5 million tons of cereals in 2001, sharply up from 1.8 million in 2000 when output was just 36 percent of the average of the previous five years. Agriculture accounts for up to 20 percent of the Moroccan GDP and employs half of the 10.6 million workforce.
http://www.map.co.ma/english/dispatches/national_news.htm
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L'agriculture marocaine à la merci des pluies d'avril
Panafrican News Agency (Dakar) April 15, 2001
Ida Hassan--Rabat, Maroc
En cette mi-avril 2001, les agriculteurs marocains scrutent le ciel à la recherche de la moindre formation orageuse pouvant être salutaire pour leur moisson. Dans ce pays où le secteur agricole contribue à hauteur de 20 pour cent au Produit intérieur brut (PIB), la production agricole est, cette année, hypothéquée par les précipitations du mois d'avril. Dans certaines régions du sud et de l'est du royaume, le sort est déjà jeté puisque les précipitations ont été insuffisantes, ce qui a été fatal pour les cultures non irriguées. Dans les plaines de la Chaouia, la région du centre du pays que l'on dénomme le "grenier du Royaume", 53.000 hectares de cultures céréalières en terres non irriguées, soit 15 pour cent de la superficie emblavée, sont actuellement considérés comme perdus à cause du manque de précipitations enregistré depuis le début du mois de février. Pis encore, 153.OOO autres hectares de cultures céréalières (soit 39 pour cent) sont menacés puisque considérés comme médiocres, et risquent de connaître le même sort s'il ne pleut pas dans les deux semaines à venir. Dans d'autres provinces du pays, où les précipitations ont été très faibles par rapport à la moyenne, la situation est jugée très critique, même si, à la fin de l'année écoulée, certaines régions du nord du pays ont enregistré des inondations suite à des pluies torrentielles.
Le Maroc, qui connaît des précipitations irrégulières dans le temps et dans l'espace, est confronté depuis plusieurs années à une sécheresse structurelle. En 1999, une année durant laquelle le pays a été touché par une sécheresse très sévère, le gouvernement avait dû lancer un "programme national de lutte contre les effets de la sécheresse" qui a nécessité une enveloppe budgétaire de près de 350 millions de dollars (1 dollar US = environ 700 francs CFA). Ce programme, qui a concerné aussi l'année 2000, a permis d'assurer l'approvisionnement en eau potable des populations vivant dans les régions sévèrement touchées, la sauvegarde du cheptel par des opérations de vaccination et de distribution de fourrage à des prix subventionnés, et l'ouverture de chantiers de travaux publics dans les campagnes pour garantir des revenus aux habitants. A la date 23 mars dernier, le volume d'eau stockée dans les retenues des barrages à usage agricole a atteint quelque 7,5 milliards de mètres cubes, soit un taux de remplissage d'environ 59 pour cent. Durant la période allant du 1-er septembre 2000 au 16 mars 2001, un volume de quelque 788 millions mètres cubes d'eau d'irrigation a été mobilisé, ce qui représente près de 32 pour cent de la dotation globale d'irrigation prévue pour la totalité de la campagne 2000/2001. Au lendemain de son indépendance en 1956, le royaume chérifien avait lancé une vaste politique de construction de barrages pour garantir ses besoins en eau potable et d'irrigation. Il compte actuellement près d'une centaine de grands barrages avec une capacité de stockage de plus de 14 milliards de mètres cubes.
Malgré les efforts déployés par le gouvernement marocain pour atténuer les effets de la sécheresse, le secteur agricole reste fortement tributaire des précipitations de ce mois d'avril.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200104150011.html
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Regions and cities urged to compete for FDI
Morocco's regions and cities should be competing with each other to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), according to Finance Ministry foreign investment chief Hassan Bernoussi. Bernoussi says the introduction of regional one-stop-shops for investment authorization should streamline regional and urban investment promotion, and his department is currently surveying regional investment strengths in order to reinforce the promotional role of the new integrated investment agencies. The Foreign Investment Department has also developed a framework for specially tailored packages aimed at the largest investors. (Source: Upline Securities)
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Morocco to speed up liberalization of sugar sector.
By Ali Bouzerda
RABAT, April 19 (Reuters) - Morocco will speed up the liberalisation of the sugar sector and gradually lift state subsidies for commodity products, a government minister said on Thursday. The state-run Compensation Fund spends more than 6.0 billion dirhams ($548 million) per year to subsidise products such as sugar, edible oils and cereals, Government General Affairs Minister Ahmed Lahlimi said. Morocco partially liberalised imports of commodity products in the early 1990s, including sugar and edible oil, but maintained a tight control on domestic market prices.
"Time has come to start a public debate and negotiate with operators in the sugar industry on how to liberalise this vital sector," Lahlimi said in a telephone interview. The debate was expected to start in the next few weeks, he said, but he gave no date. The Moroccan state subsidises refined sugar products at up to 50 percent of their sale prices on the domestic market, or the equivalent of four dirhams per kilo. "These spendings benefit speculators and intermediaries not consumers...We should put an end to this policy because we cannot continue to waste public funds," the minister said.
AGEING PLANTS
The government, he added, wants to devote more funds to the development and modernisation of Morocco's sugar refineries and processing plants. Morocco has a dozen sugar plants, led by Cosumar , which refine nearly one million tonnes of raw sugar, or the country's total consumption.
But most of these firms halted substantial investments to modernise in recent years because profit margins were low and they had no clear sign of market liberalisation, an analyst said. "The government is committed to liberalising the sugar sector as it did with edible oil last year...But the operation will not be effective before 2003 at the earliest," Benammar Maher, analyst at Upline Securities, said. To meet requests from edible oil firms such as Lesieur the socialist-led government liberalised the prices of edible oil products in 2000, and faced no major opposition, including from trade unions. "The liberalisation of the edible oil sector was a successful operation... It led to a drop in prices and benefited consumers," Lahlimi said. Morocco's sugar industry employs directly and indirectly an estimated 500,000 workers, most of them in rural areas.
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987689674nL19301372
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Moroccan firm building $20-mln oilseeds plant
(Updates with quotes, details, from para 4)
RABAT, April 18 (Reuters) - A Moroccan private firm said on Wednesday it was building an oilseeds processing plant worth $20 million which it said will be the biggest of its kind in Africa.
Ahmed Belhassan, a director of Belhassan Group (GBH), told Reuters the plant would be operational in September and will produce olive and cooking oil and cattle feed. The unit, to be part of GBH's edible oil branch Huileries du Souss, will be located in the Taoujtate area, around 160 km (100 miles) east of Rabat. "We chose Taoujtate because of its close location to the Hajeb olive and sunflower plantations," he said. The plant, which would also include a refinery, will operate with a daily grinding capacity of 1,100 tonnes, with possibility to push it to 2,000 tonnes per day. The government began last year a gradual liberalisation of the oilseeds sector to boost its competitiveness and plans to fully liberalise it by end-2002. "The liberalisation leaves you no other choice than develop your production means," Belhassan said. "We hope to establish a wholly integrated production system starting from the collection of the commodity to the bottling of the refined product." GBH, a family-owned holding based in the southern city of Agadir, operates several businesses in the foodstuffs industry, ranging from seafood to soft drinks. Analysts said the new plant would create competition for the local market's leading edible oil firm Lesieur . Lesieur claims a domestic market share of 71 percent and Huileries du Souss says it holds 20 percent. Cattle meal sales account for around 20 percent of Lesieur's turnover, which stood at 2.85 billion Moroccan dirhams ($259 million) last year. The firm is controlled by the country's largest private conglomerate the ONA Group . "Cattle feed is a new activity for us, and we are aiming at a 50-percent market share," Belhassan said. Lesieur has said it intended to invest 70 million dirhams ($6.4 million) this year to upgrade its production capacity and expand its market share. Morocco imports around 1.4 billion dirhams of edible products per year.
($1=11.009 Moroccan dirhams)
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=987616351nL18204803
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Phosphate exports earn Morocco $ 1.5 billion every year.
Morocco, Economics, 4/18/2001
Phosphate exports earn Morocco $1.5 billion per year and the Office Cherifien des Phosphates group (OCP) contributes 2.6 percent of the GDP and 18.5 percent of Morocco's overall exports. The figures were disclosed by the OCP general director, Mohamed Berrada in an interview with Moroccan daily "Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki." Part of its 2001-2005 five-year program, the group is projecting to invest some $ 780 million (7.8 billion DH) in its production units and maritime transport fleet, Berrada said. He explained further that in order to promote exports, the group purchased six tankers to convey phosphoric acid and will earmark over the coming five years some $ 120 million (1.2 billion DH) to promote this fleet. The OCP seeks to strike new partnership deals with foreign phosphate and chemical industries firms and is following with keen interest the privatization operations under way in Poland and India, he said recalling that his group was holding 50 percent of the capital of the Belgian Prayon company. Berrada stated further that despite the competitiveness of some producer countries such as China, India and Australia and of some new exporting countries such as Australia, Lituania and Russia, OCP chare in world phosphate exports went up from 25.3 percent in 1999 to 26.2 percent in 2000. Touching on the role played by OCP at the social level, Berrada said that 26,000 workers and 20,000 retired persons live on OCP resources and that the OCP pays $160 million (1.6 billion DH) worth of taxes to urban and rural communities.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010418/2001041832.html
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Morocco - Oil & Gas : British Enterprise Oil wins a contract to drill in Morocco.
A consortium led by Britain's Enterprise Oil has won last week a contract to explore hydrocarbons onshore areas in northern Morocco for. The consortium, composed of Enterprise and U.S. Anschutz Morocco Corp, was granted two licenses for hydrocarbon search on 8,700 square kilometers in Azilah Ouezzane and on 4,100 square kilometers in Tissa, both located near the northern Rif province. No details were given on the projected investments. ONAREP has signed in the past 12 months nine contracts with foreign oil companies as part of a government drive to attract foreign investment in the hydrocarbons exploration sector. Morocco, which has no oil of its own, imported last year the equivalent of $1.4 billion crude mainly from the Gulf countries. (Source: CDMC)
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African days festival opens Friday in Agadir. 4/19/2001
Cultural and economic development of African countries will be the theme of the third Moroccan 'African Days' festival opening on 20 April at Agadir, southern Morocco. Organizers said the three-day event aims at consolidating relations between Morocco and other African countries. The festival features a symposium on co-peratives and the role they can play in the development of African countries, an exhibition of African products, fashion parades and musical concerts.The 'African Days' fete was initiated by Morocco's National School of Commerce and Management and the French Institute, in collaboration with Agadir town council, Agadir Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a seaside resort located in the southern part of the country.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010419/2001041926.html
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