Tangiers to have leading role in Morocco's openness to international arena

Moroccan Prime Minster Abderrahmane Youssoufi said the government's development strategy seeks to give the northern town of Tangiers the leading role in the country's openness onto its international arena.

Youssoufi, a native of Tangiers, explained that this target is attainable by breaking the isolation of the city and integrating it in the Euro-Mediterranean economic fabric.

The socialist minister, speaking at a luncheon hosted on Saturday for a group of French journalists and businessmen and Moroccan reporters, recalled that Tangiers' population, which is growing at an average rate of 3.64 percent, is 650,000 strong with a density of 525 persons per square kilometers.

He added that this situation is causing several problems in view of the increasing needs of facilities and jobs. That is why, he went on, the government has designed a program to make of the whole region an area that will form the foundations of lasting development by upgrading local human potential and capacities in agriculture, industry, tourism and services.

He told French entrepreneurs that the city boasts several incentives, including a free export area, an offshore financial area and a preferential taxation system in addition to ongoing projects such as the industrial free export area, two industrial compounds, tourism development, the Rabat-Tangier highway, the modernization of the liquid and solid sanitation networks and the Atlantic port of Tangiers.

He called in this regard for international cooperation, particularly from Europe, to support the ongoing development process that will speed the economic and social promotion in the area, which is separated from Europe by a 14 km-long strait.