"This win-win partnership reinforces the competitiveness of the French group's sites, while enabling Morocco to have a new industrial activity of around 5,000 jobs," Ahmed Reda Chami said in a presentation before HM King Mohammed VI during the signing ceremony of a strategic industrial partnership agreement between Morocco and Alstom.
    He said the agreement will make it possible for Alstom "to benefit from a platform of railway activities in production as well as in maintenance, whose implications will go beyond our borders to reach African and the Middle-East states."
    “Such a partnership was made possible by the fact that our country has managed to bring about the conditions needed to develop an industry such as rail transport,” the minister said.
    In this regard, he added that Morocco offers stability, economic openness, a unique set of free-trade agreements and low-cost labour force.
    The Kingdom has also devised an industrial strategy, namely the National Pact for Industrial Emergence, he said.
    The French group commits itself to carrying out, over the next ten years, a volume of procurements from Morocco-based operators worth six billion dirhams (535 million euros), investing in an industrial unit that is expected to generate over the same period an export volume of more than 3.5 billion dirhams, and concluding a contract with an offshoring company based in Morocco for about 65 technical-value-added jobs.
    The minister pointed out that Alstom will also contribute to setting up trainings in its activities to support the emergence of railway industry through partnerships with universities, engineering schools and training institutes.
    He said the partnership with Alstom is consistent with HM the King’s vision for economic and human development throughout the Kingdom.
    Chami described as “very substantial” Morocco’s public investments which have increased fourfold between 2002 and 2010.