FOM Newsletter August 2002
Morocco Week in Review August 17, 2002 

President George W. Bush is expecting to see the free trade accord with Morocco signed the soonest, said Friday the US trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick. In a statement to reporters upon the Congress approval of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), authorizing the US president to negotiate trade agreements with other nations, Zoellick said the free trade accord with Morocco would contribute to backing the economic and political reforms initiated by the Kingdom.  The conclusion of such an accord, that was officially announced by President Bush last April after the talks he held with King Mohammed VI who was then on a work visit to Washington, is backed by several congressmen, and at their head the speaker of the House of representatives, Dennis Hastert.  "With TPA, we will initiate new negotiations for Free Trade Agreements with other nations such as Morocco, as well as in Central America, Australia and in Southern Africa," Zoellick said, adding that with TPA, the US will push to complete negotiations regarding the Free Trade Area of the Americas on the same aggressive time frame as the global talks. "With TPA, important amendments to the highly successful African Growth and Opportunity Act will take effect right away, helping to lift families out of poverty in Africa," said the US trade representative. "As President Bush has made clear, this vote for TPA was a win for the American people for our economy, and for the world," he said, describing the passage of the new Trade Promotion Authority by the Congress as a landmark victory.

The first destruction by incineration of pharmaceutical waste in Morocco took place on July 22, 2002 with the burning of waste at the Lafarge cement plant in Bouskoura. The operation was engineered by Maghreb Industrial Solution (MINDS), a subsidiary of the French group Suez and by its local partner Marbar Chimie. Other participants in the operations include the local authorities and the Moroccan pharmaceutical industry association AMIP.

RABAT, Aug. 14 - Morocco extended 800 million Dirhams, nearly US$ 80 million, in direct backing agriculture, agriculture minister, Ismail Alaoui, said on Tuesday. The money was used mainly to develop farming land, purchase agriculture equipment, increase animal production, the minister said at the weekly question at the parliament. The official underlined that the government is determined to continue its policy for the development of the sector but stressed that farmers and agricultural producers have a decisive role to play in this connection.

http://www.map.co.ma/mapeng/eng.htm 

Only half of Morocco's rural households have access to electricity. Although this access rate is still low, the country has made sustained efforts to generalize power access across the rural world. In 1995, the penetration rate was only 19%, according to the ministry of industry, commerce, energy and mining.  Morocco plans to speed up the expansion of rural electrification and established the target of 68% in 2004, 80% in 2006 and total penetration in the 2010 horizon.  To do so, the current program envisages to link on the yearly basis some 1,000 villages to the national grid. This program requires an annual investment of over DH 1 billion.  In 1999, the government's goal was to include 1,500 villages yearly with a supplemental budget of DH 500 million/year. The per household maximum investment was set at DH 14,000. As of the end of 2001, a total of 7,850 villages were moved into the national grid, in an operation that began in 1996. This year, the third phase of the program, which stretches to 2004, will target 5,200 villages to benefit an estimated 320,000 households.

The Faculty of Sciences at the Casablanca-based University Hassan-2 Ain Chock is to start a new graduate program in logistics engineering to begin in the academic season of 2002-2003. The post-graduate degree is of the DESS (Diplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées) level established in cooperation with a dozen companies within a Maghreb-European university network.

The Moroccan city of Agadir will host an international tourism fair called Tourism-Expo 2002. The date set for the event is August 28 to 31, 2002. The central theme of the event as promoted by its organizers is "Our Future is Tourism." The fair is expected to attract an important gathering of enterprises and organization directly or indirectly involved in the tourism sector. The event will also be an opportunity for Moroccan companies to build relationships with foreign partners involved in the travel sector including lodging, transport, organization, etc.

In conformity with the World Trade Organization, Morocco has removed all reference prices effective August 1, 2002, according to a decree from the customs and indirect tax services.  The decree removes the minimal value of importer products and the lists of products subject to the reference prices. This move came after a series of failed attempts to remove these trade barriers, even though Morocco was under the obligation to do so a year ago.

Industry sources close to the Jbel Malek gold exploration site in Morocco say the exploration office BRPM, working on behalf of the Irish firm Ormonde, reported a positive outlook to the region's gold reserves. The BRPM recently concluded its last drilling operations and the results appear positive. The office will perform additional research in the upcoming months to confirm its assumptions. Ireland's Ormonde has set up in April 2002 a joint company with the Moroccan state-owned mining bureau BRPM allowing the two organizations to search for gold through 14 permits. The permits target a 224 square kilometer zone located in the Tamlal region in northeastern Morocco.

The Moroccan subsidy fund 'Caisse Centrale de Garantie' (CCG) will obtain financial assistance from France's Francophony agency 'Agence intergouvernementale de la francophonie' (AFD) to support a guarantee fund specifically targeting the Moroccan arts and culture industries.  The fund will have 250,000 Euros destined to guarantee bank loans of Moroccan organizations involved in arts and cultural production.  The fund, called FGIC, will cover 70% of loans contracted by small and business firms of the sector with revenue of less than DH 20 million.

The production director Baz Luhrmann and producer Dino De Laurentiis' historical epic about Alexander the Great for Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox will begin in first-quarter 2003 in Morocco, the Hollywood Reporter said.  Titanic's star Leonardo DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in the movie. Luhrmann and Dino De Laurentiis will open new, permanent soundstages in Morocco, for which an opening reception is scheduled September 6.  The studio facility, a partnership between the Dino De Laurentiis Co. and Luhrmann's Bazmark Films, will be headquartered in Ouarzazate, Morocco, and will be privately financed by Dino and Martha De Laurentiis. The three stages, which Dino De Laurentiis said will take about four months to construct, will be used for "Alexander" but will remain permanent fixtures in Ouarzazate for future productions.

A Syrian serial relating the epic of Abderrahmane Al-Dakhil, or the Eagl of Kuraich, started to be screened in the Moroccan imperial city of Fez. Abderrahmane Al-Dakhil was an Umayyad Prince, who escaped the persecution of the Abbassyd dynasty to Morocco, from where he set out to Spain to found a dynasty whose greatness is still apparent in the monuments existing in Spain. Several Syrian and Moroccan stars are participating in the serial, directed by Hatim Ali.

An epic film on the Trojan war will be shot next spring in Morocco, Malta and Britain by Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Bros' "Troy" is inspired from Homer's Iliad on the rivalry of Achilles and Hector.  Morocco is an emerging favorite destination of film-makers, especially its southern regions, in view of the incomparable and diverse landscapes it offers.  Peterson will also make a film entitled "Batman vs. Superman."

Morocco's energy imports went down by 14.5% with 9.34 billion Dirhams (US$ 0.93 billion) during the first half of 2002, compared to 10.92 billion Dirhams (US$ 1.09 billion) during the same period last year, the exchange office said. The decrease is due to a drop in imports (-11.2%), gasoline and fuel (-52.9%) and other hydrocarbons (-21.7%).

Enzo Montellioni's "Al Alamayne: the Fire Line" was shot in the Moroccan southern areas of Merzouga and Erfoud, with the participation of several Moroccan comedians. The movie relates the Al Alamayn battle dating back to World War II, which remained etched in Italy's memory. The city of Al-Alamayne is located between Libya and Egypt.

Morocco exported 11.5 percent more merchandise in the first half of 2002 compared to figures from the same period last year. The simultaneous 2.5 percent decrease in imports caused the nation's trade balance to drop to 17.8 billion Moroccan dirhams compared to MD 23.8 billion ($1.6 billion) in the first half of 2001, stated the Kingdom's foreign trade bureau. The nation's exports totaled MD 43.5 billion in the fist six months of the year compared to MD 39 billion in 2001. The gains were attributed to an increase of phosphate, semi-manufactured products, food, raw minerals, animal and vegetable bi-products sales.  Moroccan exports rose by nearly four percent in the first quarter of the year. At the same time, imports to the North African state dropped six percent. - (menareport.com)

August 14, 2002 Moroccan expatriate remittances increased by 40 percent during the first half of 2002, reaching $1.5 million, reported Xinhua.  Remittances are expected to increase to four billion dollars by the year's end, increasing foreign reserves at the Central Bank from $9.8 billion to $11 billion.  Money transfers from Moroccan expatriate workers increased 57 percent to $3.3 billion in 2001, compared with 2000. The growth was attributed to declining Moroccan currency exchange rates and the European currency shift. The report shows that thousands of Moroccans converted their euro currency funds into Moroccan dirhams last year. - (menareport.com)

Rabat, Morocco (PANA) - Morocco has recorded a recession in tourism with the main indicators in the sector on a sharp decline, the economy, finance and tourism ministry has reported in its latest statistics.  Tourist flows from the major origins of tourists toward Morocco considerably fell as compared to those recorded during the first half of last year.  France, the first outlet of Moroccan tourism, is at -5.2 percent, Spain at -10.2 percent, Germany at -16.4 percent, England at - 18.3 percent and Italy at -24.6 percent.  Flows from the United States even dropped by 47.1 percent and those from Canada by almost 28 percent.  International arrivals dropped by 14 percent while the average rate of occupancy of hotels went down by 15 points as compared to last year. Tourist revenues also dropped by 31 percent, to 8.934 billion dirhams (about 850 million dollars) as against 13.033 billion last year. In Agadir (600km south of Rabat), the country's main seaside resort, the arrivals of foreign tourists dropped by 23 percent while overnight stays dropped by 30 percent as compared to the first half of last year. The decline is blamed on the record drop, by 70 percent, of German tourists, who mostly favour the seaside resort. Though many analysts attribute the situation to the consequences of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US and the anti- terrorist campaign launched by the US, some think that the crisis started developing even before those events. Meanwhile, the authorities, represented by the tourism board, intend to conduct a campaign to promote domestic tourism in order to avoid the crisis from turning into a structural one.

RABAT, Aug.16 - A low sulfur gasoline (0.035%) started to be sold in Morocco as of this Friday.  The low sulfur gasoline was introduced to meet the growing number of (TDI, HDI...) engine users, especially Moroccan expatriates and tourists. Morocco's needs in low sulfur gasoline are valued at some 150,000 tons a year, and may reach 300,000 T/year. In a first phase, it will be available over 200 stations in the main cities and roads.

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