Morocco Poised to Benefit from Global Supply Chain Shifts, Expert Says

The current crisis has proven the importance of rebuilding global value chains in a more credible, transparent and rapid manner. Thus, relocation provides a solution to the current problem of maintaining competitive value chains in a context of economic crisis "characterized by a scarcity of resources that must be optimized," said Amine Laghidi, international expert in development strategy and economic diplomacy. It is also about "offering quality products, responding to strategic issues, namely job and wealth creation, and ensuring the main mission of any chain, that of continuity and not disruption." Thus, the best approach to respond to this relocation would be to change the notion of a potential threat into an opportunity, hence the concept of co-industrialization.

Citing some examples of this co-industrialization at the level of Morocco, Mr. Laghidi mentioned the pharmaceutical industry, the agri-food industry, the electronics industries, the aeronautics industry, as many areas on which Morocco, Europe and Africa can work together, in order to ensure continuity of the value chain and to avoid in the future the fatal disruptions observed at the beginning of the pandemic and to build an autonomous value chain between Morocco and Europe, or Morocco and Africa, within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), without excluding openness to the transatlantic, Asia and the Middle East.

Moreover, it is a new opportunity for the kingdom to attract new investors, while offering more proximity and adapting to market needs. Co-industrialization will also facilitate the transfer of everything that was imported with a transport time of more than 15 days and to reproduce it together in Morocco with other partner countries. Not to mention that the new port of Dakhla and the Tanger Med port will also play their part, the interviewee stressed.