Morocco gets $ 215 million loans to develop telecom sector

Morocco has obtained $ 215 million loans for the development and liberalization of its Posts and Telecommunication sector.

The Moroccan Telecom department said Tuesday it received $ 100 million loan from the World Bank and another $ 110 million from the African Development Bank while the European Commission has allotted about 5 million ecu for the Telecom Watchdog body, "L'agence Nationale de Reglementation des Telecommunications."

The money will serve to liberalize the Moroccan Telecom sector, develop its performance, improve services and management and create the adequate atmosphere to drain more private investments.

Morocco is expected to launch by next June a tender for a private GSM mobile phone network license worth $ 500 million.

Several foreign investors had shown interest in Morocco's second GSM license. These include France Telecom, French Cegetel, U.S. GTE, and Southern Bell Corporation (SBC), Hong Kong Hutchison, German Deutsche Telekom, and China Telecom.

Other companies such as Swedish Ericsson and Finnish Nokia had already signed agreements with Moroccan state-run "Ittissalat al-Maghrib" company over Radio Base Station (RBS) projects to expand the coverage of the existing GSM network to remote provinces, including desert areas.

Several leading international mobile phone firms such as Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Telefonica... have already opened offices in Morocco to benefit from the country's growing telecom sector.

Morocco, which has a 28-Mln population, counts currently 1.5 million phone subscribers and over 100,000 mobile GSM clients.

The cellular subscribers are expected to reach 164,000 in 1999.