Fas: Gelişen ekonomi olmanın zorlukları
Moroccan economy remains resilient during the last world economic crisis and was able to resist to Arab springs. In an increasingly unstable International environment, Morocco remains stable. Implementing an original development model, the country succeed the challenge to accelerate its potential growth when the major big emerging markets slow down. The bet that morocco attempts to meet is not only to develop its traditional sectors, but also diversify its activity towards products and services with higher added value. The country intends to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI), becoming a crossroads between the European Union and the African continent, and enhance its economic relations with Sub-Saharan countries. These developments suggest that Morocco could in the near future, regarding Colombia or Peru, join the group of the “new emerging countries”.
However, this optimism should not hide some persistent fragilities, in particular substantial twin deficits and public debt from several years.
The Moroccan economy gone against the world economic trend since the Lehman crisis: whereas the world economy seems since then to have been durably weaker and more volatile, Morocco’s growth, by contrast, has proved resilient by remaining close to pre-crisis levels despite this unfavourable international context (global credit crisis, sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone, slowdown in the big emerging markets…). How can we explain this paradox? Like the other Maghreb countries, Morocco has had to rethink its development model: initially driven by the public sector, Morocco chose to stimulate growth through domestic demand by supporting consumption and investment. Thanks to this new approach, the country has experienced a period of sustained growth since 2002. Though this strength of domestic demand has progressively led to a deterioration in the current account balance, it has also enabled the Moroccan economy to show itself particularly resistant to the shocks caused by the 2009 economic crisis and, to a lesser degree, by the wave of Arab springs. However, the difficult international and regional contexts have highlighted the Moroccan economy’s structural weaknesses. Among
the most marked of these is the lack of export diversification, which, combined with high energy dependence, has led to a negative contribution to growth by foreign trade from 2004.In this context, some initiatives were taken between 2008 and 2009. Adopting a sectoral approach, these measures took the form of an overall strategic plan subdivided into the Emergence Plan for the industrial sector, the Green Morocco Plan for agriculture, the National Energy Strategy, the Plan Azur for tourism, the Digital Morocco strategy, the Halieuitis Plan for fishing and Vision 2015 for crafts. Through its different plans Morocco is pursuing its strategy of economic diversification and opening up not only to the North, but also to the South.
The country seems to be pursuing a strategy which consists both in consolidating its traditional sectors (agriculture, mining), combined diversifying its industrial fabric, and adopting a more aggressive policy tapping new markets for which the country has developed expertise.
First (chapter 1), we put Morocco’s economic situation into perspective relative to that of its neighbours and, more generally to that of the “new emerging countries”.
Next, we shall dwell on the most recent developments of the primary sector, which remains one of the keystones of the Moroccan economy and the main cause of its volatility. Moroccan agriculture has been changing since the 2000s and this trend has become stronger since the adoption of the Green Morocco Plan. But in addition to agricultural production itself, there is a whole agribusiness sector emerging, which could be one of the country’s new growth drivers.
The third focus will be on the new emerging sectors. The country is counting on the development of new high value-added technology sectors such as the automotive and aeronautical sectors. Taking advantage of its proximity to the European continent and its main markets, Morocco has employed a whole range of measures in order to attract new players. The emergence of these new activity sectors poses certain questions, among them that of their development potential. Will Morocco, like Turkey, be able to turn these high valueadded sectors into drivers of growth?
Finally we shall touch on the Moroccan sectors which export their expertise. The country has recently begun opening up to the south and wants to position itself as a hub between Europe and Africa. On the initiative of the public sector and certain big private operators, Morocco is multiplying the links between its economy and that of the African continent, on the one hand, by increasing trade and, on the other, by promoting foreign direct investment in its southern neighbours