Morocco is a country of strategic importance for a range of Italian companies and organizations, Carlo Calenda, deputy minister for economic development, said Tuesday during a business forum in Casablanca.
Calenda was at the head of a business delegation that included 160 participants, 70 companies and seven banking groups. Over 700 business-to-business meetings were scheduled between Italian and Moroccan businessmen for Tuesday in an event aimed at “deepening business opportunities”.
Work was focused in particular in the food industry, construction material and equipment, automotive and healthcare. “We have a gap to recuperate” in Morocco, warned Calenda.
The meetings are designed to begin what is expected to be an 18-month “mission system” in which “the Italian government will work with concrete, adequate resources, and a detailed action plan sector by sector,” said Calenda.
The session will ultimately create room for Italian companies in a country that now has “great stability” and that can become the gateway to “a broad area with sub-Saharan Africa, destined to grow in the coming years as a few others in the world”.
In addition to the business meetings were political sessions involving Calenda and the Moroccan representative Agriculture Minister Aziz Akhannouch.
Other meetings involved the Moroccan prime minister, as well as ministers of infrastructure and energy and the deputy foreign commerce minister.
Calenda and the Moroccan government said they were aiming to develop “a more detailed and targeted action plan, sector by sector”.
The first phase includes eighteen months of work “to make a verification, and look forward”.
The mission in Morocco is promoted by Italy’s ministries for development and foreign affairs, and organized by Confindustria, Ice, Abi, Rete Imprese with a delegation of small entrepreneurs and craftsmen, and Unioncamere.
Italian Trade Agency ICE President Riccardo Monti said that promotional initiatives in Morocco in 2014 doubled from 10 to 20 and “will be 25 or 30 in 2015”.
Monti said that the mission to Casablanca began “with the automotive industry in Morocco that has success story unique in the world”.
Since then, other sectors are opening.
Agribusiness is important, the construction business are working in a real estate boom and a plan for 800,000 new housing units, and the health care system that aims to double the number of beds.
Meanwhile, Italian export credit agency SACE announced “200 million in new study operations”. Foreign financial development institution Simest approved eighteen projects with 74 billion euros investment, and more than 430 million euros in loans for export credit for 40 projects. (ANSAmed).
