El Salvador can offer Morocco a partnership space in Latin America

El Salvador can offer Morocco a strategic partnership space and a genuine passage to the large market of Latin America, the Caribbean, Mexico and the USA, said visiting Salvadorian external affairs minister, Ramon Ernesto Gonzalez Giner.

The geographic remoteness is not at all an impediment to rapprochement between Morocco and El Salvador, Giner said at a meeting Thursday in Casablanca with Moroccan businessmen.

Giner deplored the low level of trade exchange, which is short of the two countries' potential.

Morocco's imports from El Salvador totalled $28 million in 1997, while exports to the Latin American nation stood at only $4 million during the same year.

Morocco essentially buys sugar and coffee from El Salvador, to which it sells mainly canned fish.

During the meeting, the head of the Moroccan industrial federation (CGEM), Abderrahim Lahjouji, voiced Morocco's desire to consolidate business and commercial ties with El Salvador.

CGEM suggested the creation of a joint commission, gathering Moroccan and Salvadorian economic operators, to study means to consolidate cooperation ties and investment opportunities in the two countries.