King Mohammed calls for new information technology mastery
Morocco, Economics, 4/24/2001

Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Monday called for mastering new information technologies.

"The strategic range of the (Information technologies) sector for new economies ... requires an enhancement of the Moroccan economy's competitiveness, helping our country to master new information technologies," King Mohammed VI said in a message to a symposium on "Morocco in the global information and knowledge society."

The king stressed the need to exploit the vast opportunities offered by the new information technologies, saying "it is our wish to ensure to our people a global and integrated development."

The king recalled the decision of the Late King Hassan II to liberalize the telecommunications sector, which helped cede Morocco's second GSM license to a foreign group.

The license was sold in 1998 to the private operator, Meditel, for $ 1.1 billion.

He also cited the setting up of a ministerial structure and a specialized agency, which works under the authority of the Prime Minister, to coordinate and regulate action in the IT realms.

"We have pursued this policy of overture and progress, opening, with the same transparency and rigor, Maroc-Telecom's capital to make of our country a model in the field," the King said, adding "this is a pioneering experiment which elicits meditation by Moroccans, men and women alike, on what makes them stand out: a to-the-point liberalization, a see-through framework, flexible laws, and fair competition have extended access, over a year and a half, to one of the most advanced technologies of our times, the mobile phone."

"This is evidence to the fact that our society can go very fast and very far," he said.

King Mohammed VI pledged to continue efforts to further develop the sector, terming the privatization of part of the capital of Maroc-Telecom company a vanguard experience.

In December 2000, Morocco had sold 35 percent of the capital of Maroc-Telecom to French Vivendi group at $ 2.33 billion.

The company was managing the same year a network of 3,012,386 phone subscribers, including 1.4 million mobile phone users. Maroc-Telecom Internet users numbered 16,000 direct users and 450 leased lines.

In the same year it posted sales of $ 1.2 billion.

Part of the drives to develop the IT sector, King Mohammed VI called on the government to train, by 2005, some 5000 medium and high executives in the field. He also instructed the government to convert 10,000 Holder of BA in Science into IT jobs.

The two-day symposium seeks to devise a strategy to integrate Morocco in the global information society through accelerating liberalization and opening the country to international competition in the field.

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