(Photo: ABDERRAHMANE MOKHTARI, Ford Motor Co.)
Rabat, Morocco (TMT)- Leading American car manufacturer company Ford has decided to invest in Morocco, with the North African Kingdom confirming day in and day out its importance in the car manufacturing sector at large.
Ford is opening a regional trade office based in Casablanca and a sales office in the Tangier free zone, northwest of the country.
With this endeavor, Ford aims to take advantage of the dozens “low cost” automotive suppliers who settled in the free zones of Tangier and Kenitra, in the post-gaze of Renault opening factories few years ago.
“We will create thousands of indirect jobs and generate millions of euros of investment in the area,” said in a statement Kalyana Sivagnanam, director of Ford’s Middle East and North Africa regional office.
It i worth reminding that Morocco has shoehorned various attractive initiatives with an aim to develop an automotive ecosystem in the country. For example, various industrial zones allow companies to have a tax exemption of 25 years, provided that most of the production is exported.
These initiatives revealed to be successful as since the aforementioned tax exemption was enacted, more and more automotive companies are opening offices in Morocco. Since French car manufacturer company Renault opened a factory in Tangiers in 2012, it was able to produce 200 000 vehicles.
The automotive sector has even become Morocco’s most important exports sector, with revenues even outperforming the Phosphate exports, traditionally the country’s most important exports sector.
As a matter of fact, in 2014, and with a turnover of over 4 billion euros, the automotive sector has for the first time in the history of Morocco outperformed the turnover of the phosphate exports.
The Moroccan Times.
