MOROCCO ECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 RABAT 001266 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR NEA/MAG, NEA/OFI AND INL/AAE DEPT ALSO FOR EB/TPP, EB/IFD AND DRL/IL STATE PASS USTR FOR DOUG BELL STATE PASS USAID FOR JENNIFER RAGLAND USDOC ITA/MAC/ANESA FOR NATE MASON USDOC FOR FSC/OIO AND CLDP USDOL FOR ILAB PARIS FOR ZEYA LONDON FOR TSOU ROME FOR ROSE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON ETRD EAIR EINV SOCI MO SUBJECT: MOROCCO ECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS -------------- More Trade with Maghreb Neighbors -------------- ¶1. Moroccan trade with its Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) partners - Algeria, Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia - reached $686 million in 2005, nearly double the previous year but still only a fraction of Morocco's total trade. Moroccan imports from the AMU totaled $550 million, up from $330 million in 2004, while exports during the last three years have averaged $130 million annually. Almost half of the imports were petroleum products. Moroccan trade with AMU countries amounts to only two percent of the country's foreign trade. -------------- Privatization Proceeds -------------- ¶2. Twenty-five companies, seven of them Chinese, have shown interest in buying the state-owned Moroccan Tea and Sugar Company (Somathes). In May the Ministry of Finance launched a tender to cede the government's share of Somathes, setting a minimum bidding price of $51 million. The deadline for bids is July 16. The sale of Somathes is part of a GOM privatization drive launched in the 1990s. Through the end of 2005, 70 entities (44 companies and 26 hotels) had been totally or partially sold off, earning the state around eight billion dollars. Eighty percent of the proceeds came from foreign investors - three quarters of them French. -------------- On-Line Trading Hits the Casablanca Board -------------- ¶3. On-line trading was introduced into Morocco on June 14, making Morocco the only country in the Arab world to use such a system. Customers of www.DarTawfir.ma - which means "House of Saving" in Arabic - can manage their investment accounts on the Casablanca exchange in real-time without intermediaries. -------------- More Low-Cost Flights to Morocco -------------- ¶4. Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair has signed a five-year agreement with the GOM after six months of negotiations, bringing more competition on flights between Europe and Morocco. The agreement includes a commitment by Ryanair to establish up to 20 routes, carrying one million passengers per year within three years. Ryanair's chief rival, British airline easyJet, will begin flights to Marrakech in July. Attracting low-cost airlines is part of the GOM's ambitious "Vision 2010" strategy to attract ten million tourists per year by 2010. -------------- -------------- 500,000 Year-old Human Remains Found in Casablanca -------------- -------------- ¶5. A human fossil remain of an upper premolar tooth has been discovered in a quarry site in Casablanca. The human fossil is associated with other remains dating back at least RABAT 00001266 002 OF 002 500,000 years, according to a statement by the Ministry of Culture. The same site had previously yielded a Homos Erectus lower jaw in 1969. The discovery was made by a Moroccan-French team composed of members of the Moroccan Institute of Science and Archaeology (INSAP) and France's Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). RILEY