On Friday, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI presided over the launch of “Renault Ecosystem,” a major new expansion of French auto manufacturer Renault’s existing investments in the country. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, Moroccan minister of Industry, Trade and Digital Economy, and Bernard Cambier, chairman of Renault’s Africa, Middle East and India region, signed the deal valued at more than $1.2 million at a ceremony in Rabat.
The ecosystem will bring Renault together with local auto parts makers to support Renault’s two car manufacturing plants in Tangier and Casablanca. At the ceremony, Cambier lauded Morocco’s commitment to providing dedicated vocational schools for the automobile industry and said that at least 15 Moroccan component makers have already committed to investing in the new “Renault “Ecosystem.” Minister Elalamy noted that the project will double the number of Renault jobs in Morocco to 160,000 by 2020 and generate vehicle exports in excess of $2 billion a year.
“Thanks to its stability, welcoming business environment and skilled workforce, Morocco has become a highly attractive place for foreign investment,” said Jean AbiNader, executive director of the Morccan American Trade and Investment Center. “The Renault Ecosystem is another signal that Morocco is on a path of continued growth.”
There are already more than 300 companies with the supply chain of the automobile and aeronautics manufacturing sectors in Morocco, with companies like Bombardier, Ford and Peugeot establishing a presence. Earlier this year, Morocco was named among the 50 most innovative economies in the world and one of just two economies in Africa by the 2016 Bloomberg Innovation Index.
In 2014, the Wall Street Journal’s Frontiers/FSG Frontier Markets Sentiment Index reported that Morocco is among the top 10 frontier markets — and the only one in the Maghreb — most favored by foreign corporations. KPMG International and Oxford Economics’ 2015 Change Readiness Index (CRI) ranked Morocco as the most “change-ready” country in the Maghreb, with particularly positive results in the category of “enterprise capability.” The World Bank’s Doing Business 2016 report ranked Morocco first out of 20 MENA countries in terms of “ease of starting a business” and placed it sixth overall in the region for “ease of doing business.”
