Morocco

Lord Sharman Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Sharman]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for introducing this debate and for giving me the opportunity to make a few remarks about trade and business with Morocco. As your Lordships will know, I was appointed the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Morocco at the end of last year, so in this debate it is appropriate that I restrict my remarks to matters of trade. I will leave the other aspects of the relationship to those who are much better qualified to deal with them.

From the point of view of many parts of British business, the first thing they say when you talk to them about Morocco is that it is too French and too risky, both of which are fundamentally untrue. That is not the case; Morocco is important to us as a market, as the previous speakers have said. It is a market that we must be concerned with, and UKTI has reflected that. It is one of only 14 markets in Africa where UKTI has a permanent presence.

In my judgment, it is particularly important because if you accept the proposition that Africa is likely to be the next great area for generating global growth then, looked at from the perspective of Great Britain Ltd, we have penetrated that area quite successfully in anglophone Africa, largely through the southern states. However, the phrase that I use is to say to people, “When you look at China, you would not go into half of China”, and we have practically ignored francophone West Africa. What Morocco gives us, particularly with the structures in place there through Casablanca Finance City, is the opportunity to use that as a hub and penetrate francophone West Africa through it. Interestingly, I was visiting a vegetable-growing operation down there a few weeks ago which, your Lordships might be surprised to know, farms 8,000 acres of vegetables in Senegal but it is done via Morocco.

I hope I have made the point that it is strategically important for business. I would like to talk a little bit about the Morocco/British Business Council which has rather fallen into abeyance but I am working on it. It has not met for some time and, when I was in Morocco in March, I met Mostafa Terrab, the Chief Executive of OCP, the large phosphates business. He and I will co-chair a new initiative in that area, probably with a different title. It will be much more restrictive in its ambitions but these will be readily achievable. I am working on that at the moment and hope we can launch it in September or October this year.

I have decided to concentrate most of my efforts as trade envoy on a limited number of industrial sectors. This is because one cannot do everything and I would sooner try to do a number of things well than a lot of things badly. The first sector I am concentrating on is financial services, to which other noble Lords have already referred. The CFC project in Casablanca is very interesting and impressive. Noble Lords will not know that I was financial adviser to the London Docklands Development Corporation when Canary Wharf came into being. I was also the financial adviser to the Irish Government in the creation of the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin. I would describe CFC as a combination of the two. It has a very attractive package of incentives on offer and a huge, fantastic site. When it gets going it will be a key place in north Africa through which to access the rest of francophone Africa. The stock exchanges in London and Casablanca are talking to each other about a project to work together. We are also looking to see if we can get an insurance centre established there, linking in to the London insurance market.

The second sector, which may sound a bit surprising, is higher education. I acknowledge the work of the British Council in Morocco in this area and, in particular, the work done by Martin Rose, its director there. There are a large number of co-operative agreements between British universities and Moroccan universities being developed. These have moved in recent years away from the old focus on the humanities and more towards science and technology. We are in the preliminary stages of discussions on the establishment of a campus of a British university in Morocco and also a British-based business school which will, I hope, be within Casablanca Finance City.

Reflecting what has been said earlier, the thirst for English language skills is prevalent wherever you go in Morocco today. The thirst for English-based secondary school education is there as well and there are ongoing discussions about the establishment of a leading, independent British secondary school in Morocco. This is important because it fuels the relationship that then builds trade.

The third area I am looking at is energy, but only in the sense that Morocco, like many other north African countries, does not have a lot of hydrocarbons knocking around the place. It is not self-sufficient in energy and is looking at importing liquefied natural gas. The areas of renewables, particularly energy from waste such as tapping methane from groundfill or anaerobic digesters based on vegetable and food waste, are ones where Britain has the technology to participate, and we will be having discussions on them. The second area of renewables, which is at an early stage but has great potential, is wave power.

Let me say a quick word about agribusiness. It is not that I do not think it is important but it is taking care of itself quite well at the moment. However, we can put focus on that. On tourism, developments need to look further than only tourism and should include event management, conferences and so on. Were the facilities there, it would be an attractive proposition.

From my point of view, the prospects for furthering our trading relationship with Morocco are good. I have been able to enjoy cordial relationships and, as has been said, it is an open country. It is very easy to do business with Morocco and we should be doing so.