France and Morocco Strengthen Port Partnership at Tanger-Med Complex

The French and Moroccan transport authorities intend to go further in bilateral port cooperation at the Tanger-Med level. With this in mind, the French Minister Delegate to the Minister of Ecological Transition made a working visit to Morocco from March 24 to 26, 2021. At the end of this meeting, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari visited the Railway Training Institute, a project carried by the National Railway Office (ONCF) and the National Railway Company (SNCF). The port platform visited is intended to be a benchmark player, particularly in railway training on all the skills useful for the operation of conventional or high-speed lines.

Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari recognized the professionalism, skills and dynamism of the Tanger-Med port complex, which ranks first among container ports in Africa and the Mediterranean. The French minister stressed that "bilateral cooperation in the port sector is all the more important at a time when France is investing heavily in this sector". He revealed that the cooperation between SNCF and ONCF is a "great success", both in terms of sharing experience and high-speed rail network expansion projects.

For his part, the Moroccan Minister of Equipment, Transport, Logistics and Water, Abdelkader Amara, stated that this high-level meeting covered various subjects of bilateral cooperation, including international road transport, rail transport, trade, maritime transport and motorway transport within the framework of public-private partnerships in infrastructure.

It should be noted that this meeting is part of the 14th France-Morocco High-Level Meeting held on December 19, 2019 in Paris, aimed at giving new impetus to the strategic, multidimensional and exceptional partnership relations between the two countries and intensifying the bilateral political dialogue. It resulted in the signing of several bilateral agreements in various areas of cooperation.