The launch of the Safi thermal power station required an envelope of 2.6 billion dollars. According to the Minister of Energy, Mines, Water and Environment, Abdelkader Amara, this foreign investment is the largest of its kind in Morocco.

"This thermal power plant will allow us to cover approximately 25% of the national electricity demand by 2018, and this, with a total capacity of 1,386 Megawatts," the minister declared last Wednesday, before recalling that Japanese financial institutions are providing 67% of the financing for this project.

Very sophisticated techniques, compliant with international standards, will be used in this station for the first time in Africa, thus meeting the strictest international requirements in terms of environmental protection and thermal emission adjustment, he added.

The realisation of a major project of this kind "will help us to ensure the growing demand for energy in the future and to cope with its annual increase, which reaches up to 6%," he affirmed.

This project, whose construction work will be completed in the first half of 2018, will have a direct positive impact, at the national and local level, on the stability of the country's electricity supply, as well as in terms of technology transfer and employment.