Privatization minister pleads for integrating small firms in productive fabric
Morocco, Economics, 1/29/1999

The Moroccan privatization minister called Wednesday for the integration of small firms in Morocco's productive fabric. Rachid Filali, who was addressing a meeting in Casablanca on "Assets and Obstacles to Private Sector Development," recalled that enterprises in Morocco are mainly small ones.

These firms generate large numbers of jobs, but did not benefit from any attention of the part of the public and private decision-makes in the past decades, he said.

The minister, who stressed the importance of large financial and industrial holdings in sharpening Morocco's competitive edge, noted that it is equally necessary to integrate the small firms in the national productive fabric.

Filali warned against the negative syndrome of the wait-and-see approach prevailing at the level of investments. He explained that two pretexts are often mentioned to justify such attitude.

Drought and its incidence of agricultural output are usually cited as a pretext to justify the moroseness and over-cautiousness in matters of investments. On the other hand, when the rain is abundant, people tend to think that investments will automatically flourish, which is not the case, the minister said.

Filali added that the slowness in operating reforms in administration and justice, the complexity in investment procedures and corruption are also mentioned.

All these pretexts denote a mistrust between the government and the investors, he said. The over-cautiousness of private entrepreneurs reflects a permanent pessimism translated by claiming more advantages for the state.

The minister underlined that though being legitimate, these claims should not be conditions for carrying out investments.

He noted that drought and the subsequent agricultural hardships are due to from Morocco's semi-arid weather and will always exist.

Reforming justice and administration, fighting corruption, easing investment procedures cannot be made in one or five years, he said.

"These reforms will take time, because they are part of a mentality, but, he added, reform process is well underway."

Filali stressed the need to be aware that investments in Morocco depend more and more on the competition of other countries, be they neighbors or not (...) which do not hesitate to conquer new outlets at the expense of Morocco.

Any delay, any wait-and-see policy and any over-cautiousness, under the pretext of drought or the slowness of reforms, in taking the decision to invest will be harmful to Morocco as a whole, he warned, before stressing "the speeding up of investments and exports will rather accelerate economic reforms."

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