USAID and Moroccan government seek to boost trade and employment in Morocco

13/07/2006

The Moroccan government and the US Agency for International Development are working together to help Moroccans take advantage of the free trade agreement through initiatives such as shifting agriculture to more valuable products, implementing required legal and policy changes and promoting Moroccan businesses in the United States.

[File] US ambassador to Morocco Thomas Riley inaugurates a USAID project in Errachidia in 2005

The Moroccan Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Economic Upgrading and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are working together on a project called New Business Opportunities (NBO), which aims to boost Moroccan employment and help Moroccan exporting companies gain maximum benefit from the American market.

The project, which is part of a larger USAID-Moroccan government agreement signed in April 2004, is expected to generate turnover of $175m and create up to 10,000 jobs.

Following the US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement that went into effect in January, Moroccans are looking at ways to shift employment from traditional agriculture to higher value products.

According to a statement on the USAID website, the agency is already addressing concerns about the potential impacts of free trade on Moroccan agriculture, which employs approximately 40 per cent of the country's workforce.

"As employment inevitably declines in a more productive agriculture sector, more jobs will be needed in manufacturing and services," said the statement.

At the same time, USAID says it is helping Moroccan enterprises take full advantage of the free trade agreement. It expects businesses to "take full advantage of opportunities offered to young men between the ages of 15 and 34, who currently experience unemployment rates as high as 30 per cent in some urban areas."

USAID is also assisting Morocco in implementing legal and policy changes required by the free trade agreement.

"Priorities include stricter enforcement of intellectual property rights, increased transparency in the adoption of new laws and regulations, investment simplification, revisions to tax incentives, bankruptcy reform, and support for financial markets reform," according to a USAID report on Morocco.

"USAID has a lot of support in Morocco from the leadership of the country and the parliament. You need to have a wide and inclusive relationship," Oliver Wilcox, USAID Democracy and Governance advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, told Magharebia.

According to the Morocco Times, the project will provide support to business associations to help promote Moroccan industry to their US counterparts through presence at US trade shows, promotion of Morocco in key US trade journals and facilitation of trade and investment missions of US buyers and investors to Morocco.

Newspapers quoted US ambassador to Morocco Thomas Riley as saying, "We have launched this programme to help Moroccan firms penetrate the American market and identify the best American partners."

"There is an advantage to presenting projects as technical support. There are things Moroccans have already expressed an interest in and are already trying to do," said Wilcox. Hassan Benmehdi in Casablanca contributed to this report