FOM Newsletter July 2002
Morocco Week in Review July 25, 2002 

Japan has extended a group of Moroccan organizations active in socio-economic development of rural areas a donation of 3.35 million DH (US$ 314,878). The donation will finance health, drinking water supply, women promotion, handicraft and agriculture projects in rural areas.  It will serve to extend a training center for women in rural regions and purchase sewing, knitting and embroidery machines, buy eye-disease diagnosis devices, finance the refurbishment of classes and school canteens, build water storage and pumping facilities and an electricity generator. Recipients are a pottery cooperative, a development association, a drinking water association, a blindness-prevention association, and other small rural associations. The Japanese embassy in Morocco said non-reimbursable assistance extended by Japan has helped carry out 207 projects since 1989.

Moroccan state secretary for scientific research, Omar Fassi Fihri, said in Tangiers Monday Morocco has been since 2001 allocating 0.7% of its GDP to scientific research and the rate is scheduled to reach 1% before the end of the five year 200-2004 plan. The official said the percentage of funds earmarked to scientific research has grown from 0.3% in 1998 to 0.7% in 2001 and is scheduled to each 1% before 2004.  Articles published by Moroccan researchers in international scientific magazines went up from 400 in the period between 1991 and 1996 to 860 in the 1997-2000 period and reached 1,065 in 2001, he went on noting that Morocco now is Africa's 3rd most prolific country and the Arab world's 2nd. However, he stressed, Morocco only published 0.1% of scientific research papers worldwide, compared to 37% for the European Union countries, 34% for the USA, 31% for south-east Asian countries and 1.1% for Israel. The official ascribed Morocco's lagging behind in scientific research to the absence of well adapted scientific structure and the lack of scientific centers. Fihri further deplored the low number of invention patents deposited annually in Morocco (about 500), as compares to 25,000 in the USA, 6,000 in France, 4,000 in Japan.

Morocco has called a tender to select local and foreign partners to develop five seaside tourist resorts involving a total investment of 44 billion dirhams ($4.21 billion), a finance ministry spokesman said on Monday. "We are looking for builders and managers of five seaside resorts on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic(coasts)," he told Reuters. He said the plan, dubbed Plan Azur, aims at building up to 50,000 hotel rooms as part of the country's efforts at quadrupling by 2010 the number of foreign visitors to 10 million. He said a September 23 deadline had been set for the presentation of the bids. The five resorts are:  
- The Mediterranean Saidia-Ras El Maa
- The north-Atlantic Khemis Sahel
- The El Houzia near the Atlantic city of El Jadida
- Mogador near the Atlantic city of Essaouira
- The Plage Blanche in the southern Atlantic city of Guelmim.

The tourism department of the finance ministry has a website detailing the plan at: www.investintourism.ma. ($1=10.461 Moroccan dirhams)

Morocco's tourism industry employs some 640,000 people and netted the North African country over $2.3 billion in receipts in 2001.

Souhail Karam, Rabat newsroom, +212-37 720065 fax +212-37 722499, rabat.newsroom@reuters.com))

Morocco's King Mohammed VI chaired Wednesday in Tangiers over the signing of an investment convention whereby the firm Palais des Roses International, an affiliate of Saudi Dahlan Group, will build a sea resort, Taghazout, near the southern city of Agadir. The convention was initialed by Dahlan Group chief, Sheikh Salah Abdallah Kamel, and on behalf of the Moroccan government by Driss Jettou, interior minister,Fathallah Oualalou, minister of economy, finance, privatization and tourism, Bouamour Taghouane, equipment minister, and Mohamed Mbarki, secretary of state in charge of housing. The convention is part of a new strategy for the development of tourism by 2010, based on an innovative public-private partnership. The document sets the modalities and conditions for the materialization of the project, based on a new-generation concept of tourism development, inspired from the Moroccan architectural heritage and in harmony with the principles of sustained development through promoting local riches, namely the Argan tree, the bold ibis as well as the whales that often swim along the region's coast. The program on the development of the sea resort provides for the construction of 35 high-rank hotel units with a 19,000-bed accommodation capacity, tourism residences with a total accommodation of 5,100 beds and leisure and entertainment equipment, including 3 golf links and two fishing and leisure shelters. The total investment stands at 1.6 billion dirhams for the development works and the in-site infrastructures will generate an induced investment of 10 billion dirhams for the materialization of the accommodation and leisure equipment. Once materialized, the project will contribute to the generation of 15,000 direct jobs and 75,000 indirect ones.

Return to Friends of Morocco Home Page