The meeting of investors from Gulf countries in Morocco "GULFINVEST", whose 3rd edition closed its work on Tuesday evening in Tangier, announced good news for the future of investment in Morocco.

On this occasion, the president of the Union of Chambers of Commerce of the Gulf countries, Khalil Abdalah Al-Khounji, noted that, according to his organisation's future projections, the volume of direct and indirect investments from Gulf countries in Morocco should reach 100 billion dollars in the next 10 years.

According to him, Mr. Al-Khounji, who was speaking before an audience of high officials and 155 businessmen and investors from the Gulf alongside their Moroccan counterparts, noted in this sense the importance of the investment opportunities offered by Morocco in several sectors such as industry, tourism, agriculture and energy.

Held under the theme "A strategic partnership for an economy of the future", this event was dedicated essentially to the examination of investment prospects in Morocco with the Tangier-Tetouan region as a particular focus.

In this perspective, a workshop was organised under the theme "The potentials and advantages of Tangier", thus serving as an opportunity to highlight the assets of the city of the Strait and the whole region, reinforced by the major structuring projects put in place to give an accelerator to economic development, notably, Tangier Med and the free zones.

In this regard, the general director of the Tangier Export Free Zone, Mehdi Tazi Riffi, gave an overview of the activity of this zone under the Tangier Med industrial and logistics platform, which hosts some 500 companies and employs more than 40 thousand people.

He also noted the creation, in the Tangier Med development scheme, of other free zones and activities dedicated notably to logistics and the automotive industry, emphasising that this platform, close to the large Tangier Med port, offers advantageous services for investors and benefits from a unique geostrategic positioning on the Strait of Gibraltar and at the crossroads of international shipping lines. For his part, the regional delegate for tourism in Tangier-Tetouan, Mustafa Agounjab, noted the potential for tourism development in the region, indicating that Vision 2020 pays particular attention to the development of the northern tourist territory, characterised by its diversity thanks to its 400 km of coastline, its historic cities and its natural wealth. According to him, the ambition of Vision 2020 for this region is to increase the accommodation capacity from 15 thousand beds currently to 40 thousand beds and to increase the number of visitors from nearly one million tourists currently to 2.5 million.

Concerning the agricultural aspect, the regional director of agriculture, Mustafa Hassani, specified that the Green Morocco Plan (PMV) plans, in its regional declination, to make agriculture a growth engine in the Tangier-Tetouan region, in the same way as industry and services, by taking advantage of the local agricultural potential, notably in the olive, fruit tree, red fruit and dairy chain sectors. He made it known that the PMV plans, for the region, the realisation of 119 projects worth 8.5 billion DH by 2020, specifying that 82 projects are already realised or in the process of realisation for a total cost of 5 billion DH.

In substance, several other presentations were made notably on the project of reconversion of the Tangier-Ville port, a structuring project for the development of cruise and leisure tourism and the development of the immediate vicinity of the port, as well as on the potential in renewable energies of the Tangier-Tetouan region, which houses three wind farms with a total capacity of nearly 220 megawatts.