Rabat, Morocco (TMT)- Morocco’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Mohamed Boussaid said last weekend, on the sidelines of a gathering held in Fes by the local section of National Rally for Independents party (RNI), that what is currently happening in Fes is amounting to a crime.
Boussaid was referring to the claims of Minister Mohamed Abbou, the on-term Minister-Delegate for Public Service and the Modernization of the Administration, who said during the very same meeting that “I was in 2005 a victim of corruption in Fes,” further stressing that “as an investor, I wanted to start an agribusiness in there, an investment aimed to create 400 job opportunities in the said city. “
“I filled the administrative papers and dropped everything by the local branch of the Moroccan Investment Development Agency (CRI). When my file reached the approval stage, I was asked for a bribe,” the Delegate Minister said.
Boussaid confirmed Abbou’s claims adding that Fes suffers from the lack of attractiveness, especially in the wake of the closure of various factories and the emergence of new industrial cities like Tangier [This latter offered 70,000 new jobs recently according to Morocco’s leading economy news outlet Leconomiste], which lead Fes “to fall into poverty, extremism and other phenomena.”
Boussaid said that “the social anxiety and the lack of trust in Fez makes potential investors shun the city.”
“It’s criminal what is happening in Fez,” stressed Boussaid.
The Moroccan Times.
