It is a beautiful and joyful celebration organized by Maroc Entrepreneurs on Saturday, January 20 in Paris to celebrate its 20th anniversary, in partnership with about thirty companies, organizations and media including AfricaPresse.Paris. This association chaired by Bouchra Bayed claims “12,000 members who are recruited among the large diaspora around the world” (estimated at 4.5 million people), object of all the attention of the many Moroccan personalities present.
Even though the event was friendly, it did not prevent the very current problems of the Cherifian kingdom from being discussed during several round tables moderated by the independent journalist Farida Moha. The event was the occasion to launch multiple calls for Moroccan elites living abroad to return to the country to help give a new boost to the dynamism of economic development, thanks to skills acquired elsewhere.
The win-win return
Although transfers from the diaspora (65 billion dirhams, or 6.1 billion euros) are the primary source of foreign currency for the Moroccan economy (ahead of tourism, automobile exports and phosphates), it is still necessary to “think about a concerted and integrated action plan, to facilitate the “win-win return of Moroccan expatriate skills” in order to allow ” securing Morocco’s place in the world economy”, said Abdesselam El Ftouh, director of the Hassan II Foundation’s Economic Pole for Moroccans living abroad (now also known as Moroccans of the World).
Support policy
Descendants of the first migrants of the 1960s “have a lesser link with Morocco,” however, noted Wassim Biaz, director of the Banking Division of the Moroccans of the World at the Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP). “It is necessary, he added, to have a real policy of support for Moroccans of the world”, as well as a “better political representativeness”.
Five challenges
Professor Driss Guerraoui, President of the Competition Council, preferred to evoke the five major challenges facing Morocco over the next twenty years. After noting that the country “has become considerably richer” over the past twenty years, with a tripling of its GDP (Gross domestic product), Driss Guerraoui said that, to consolidate the enormous gains made, it is now necessary to generalize economic and social modernization to affect all regions of the country and benefit all levels of society.
The second challenge is that of distributing the benefits of this modernization so that all citizens and all regions benefit from it. Responsible governance is the third challenge, and Morocco has already taken up this challenge by subjecting its institutions to the principles of control, evaluation, monitoring and, above all, accountability. According to Driss Guerraoui, in order to “liberate energies”, competition must be “free and fair” which requires “the effective and merciless fight against rents, favoritism, clientelism, corruption and against all the abuses that make us today need this responsible governance”. The sustainability and durability of the new economic model to be built are the fourth and fifth challenges.
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