Renault Launches Major Expansion in Morocco

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - April 12, 2016) -  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. Moroccan Minister of Industry, Trade and Digital Economy Moulay Hafid Elalamy 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 part makers to support Renault's two car manufacturing plants in Tangier and Casablanca. At the ceremony, Mr. Cambier lauded Morocco's unflagging 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 Ecosystem. Minister Elalamy noted that the project will double the number of Renault jobs in Morocco to 160,000 by 2020 and generate car exports in excess of $2 billiona 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 in the supply chains of the automobile and aeronautics manufacturing sector in Morocco, with companies like Bombardier, Ford and Peugeot establishing a presence there. Earlier this year, Morocco was named among the 50 most innovative economies in the world and one of just two such economies in Africa by the 2016 Bloomberg Innovation Index. The Index's results echoed the findings of many industry reports of recent years. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal's Frontiers/FSG Frontier Markets Sentiment Index reported that Morocco is among the top ten 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."

The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about political and social developments in Morocco and the role being played by the Kingdom of Morocco in broader strategic developments in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

This material is distributed by the Moroccan American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.