 Morocco (Rabat) - Morocco is brimming with business opportunities in different fields, notably ICT, education, agriculture, financial services, building and renewable energies, important sectors in which British companies are interested, Deputy Chief Executive of the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), Susan Haird said. "Morocco is a very good trading partner for the United Kingdom," Haird told the Moroccan News Agency MAP at the end of a four-day visit to Morocco (June 1-4), during which she met with Moroccan and British businessmen and visited several British businesses operating in Morocco, such as Shell, Uniliver, Scott Wilson, G4S…etc. She underlined that "there is a lot of goodwill from both sides" to further promote their trade relations, adding that trade between the two countries reached 3 billion pounds last year. "There is always scope to do more, and we are hoping to do more." The British official added that there are many opportunities for British companies to do their business in Morocco as "Casablanca seeks to make itself a regional hub for finance.” “I’m here to see what the opportunities are for strengthening trade between our countries,” Haird said, adding that the two countries have “good” trade relations. The UKTI Deputy Chief Executive said the UK is a “very important investor” in Morocco, adding that there are many Britain-based companies investing in Morocco and there is a very active British chamber of commerce for Morocco. The British official commended Morocco’s large-scale anti-poverty programme, “the National Initiative for Human development (INDH)”, saying that it “is extremely important” to fight poverty and develop human capital. The country is “doing great things to eradicate poverty,” She said. In this respect, she underlined that the “British investors will be interested to take part in this initiative, as part of their cooperative social responsibilities programs.” Morocco’s Economy Resisted the Crisis Extremely Well“Morocco’s economy has resisted the crisis extremely well,” Haird said, adding that “your banks were not hurt as some western banks were.” She recalled that Morocco’s economy grew by 5% last year and is expected to grow by about 3% this year. “It’s a very high growth rate in this troubled time,” she stressed. She noted, however, that some of Morocco’s export markets suffered from the economic downturn, stressing the need to find other means to achieve growth, such as encouraging domestic consumption and looking to new growing markets and traditional partners which are also growing. Britain Has Emerged From Recession “Likewise many countries, Britain has suffered from the global recession,” Haird said, adding that “now, we have emerged from recession: we had two consecutive quarters of growth, many of the economic indicators are very strong and people are feeling very optimistic.” “I’m confident that Britain’s economy has returned to growth and will continue to grow”, Haird noted, stressing that the country “has very good foundations for economy, very competitive companies and lots of very strong sectors.” Talking about the ways out of recession, she said that “the UK government is placing a lot of emphasis on the import/export-led growth because a number of our traditional trading partners, including some of our EU partners, have indeed been in recession.” “I do believe that export is key to recovery,” she said, adding that the UK companies “have been looking for less traditional export markets and see if they can export their exports there.” (MAP) Global Arab Network |