Mohammed Ahmed Al Obaidly, Board Member of Qatar Chamber, presenting a memento to El Mekki Gaouane (left), the Ambassador of Morocco to Qatar, after the official opening of the Moroccan Trade Mission in Qatar, at the Qatar Chamber in Doha yesterday. With them is Qatar Chamber General Manager Remy Rohani. Salim Matramkot
BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: Qatar’s direct investment in Morocco saw a rise of $800m during 2000-2009, accounting for about two percent of the total investments from the Arab world, Al Makki Gaouane, the Ambassador of Morocco to Qatar, said here yesterday.
Al Makki was speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of a business networking and B2B meeting hosted by Qatar Chamber (QC) for a visiting high level private sector business delegation from Morocco.
The 25-member business delegation representing a wide range of sectors aims at exploring areas of potential collaboration as well as developing and strengthening economic cooperation with Qatar in specific sectors, namely pharmaceuticals, agro-business, IT solutions, TV content development and interior design fabrics.
The trade mission that arrived in Doha yesterday will continue exploring business and investment opportunities until November 19.
Present at the meeting were Mohammed Ahmed Al Obaidly, Board Member of QC, Remy Rowhani, Director General at QC, and a number of prominent businessmen from Qatar and the North African state.
“Morocco is free-market and highly competitive economy which is blessed with political as well as economic stability. There are several promising sectors that may offer attractive returns on investments. We have launched a host of investment-friendly schemes and programmes to attract local as well as foreign direct investments in host industries including aeronautics, IT, fishing and agro-businesses to achieve rapid industrial growth and economic diversification,” Al Makki said.
“We have free trade agreements with the European Union and several neighboring countries such as Jordon and Egypt, providing a market size of nearly one billion people”, he noted. He also highlighted that Morocco has established several free economic zones that offer tax holidays to investors for first five years.
Asked to provide some statistics about the Qatar-Moroccan trade volume, Al Obaidly said: “Currently I don’t have any figures with me in this regard. But we have investments in Morocco’s real estate sector and exploring other areas to do more.”
However, according to latest statistics available, the volume of trade exchange between the two countries in 2010 was about QR383.67m (874.21m dirhams or MAD). In addition to real estate, pharmaceuticals and IT business, value-adding solutions, programme and content development for television, and textile, in particular for home design fabrics, are the sectors that have been identified as holding particular potential for the development of Moroccan-Qatari trade.
Qatar is becoming more and more a strategic market for Moroccan companies and there is high demand for such trade missions from Moroccan entrepreneurs The Moroccan companies that are part of the delegation are all recognized for their expertise and experience in strategic sectors and benefit from a strong track record.
The Peninsula
