Morocco eyes €10bn for tourism

Morocco's tourism investment fund hopes to attract cash from the UAE and other GCC states as the country aims to double the number of tourists.

Morocco is seeking to grow its tourism industry.

Morocco is seeking to raise as much as €10 billion (Dh52.6bn) through an investment fund aimed at tourism projects across the country.

The fund is being developed to help achieve Morocco's Vision 2020 plan, which includes doubling the number of tourists it attracts to about 18 million and creating 147,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

Tarik Senhaji, the chairman of the Moroccan Agency for Tourism Development, said some preliminary agreements had been signed with partners in the GCC.

As much as half of the total fund is expected to be raised in the debt markets, with the rest from investors such as sovereign wealth funds.

"We're in the process of setting up the operational side of it so we can start investing hopefully by the end of this year," said Mr Senhaji.

The Emirates has strong links with Morocco. UAE companies that are already investing in Moroccan projects include Emaar Properties, Al Maabar and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD).

Mr Senhaji hopes sovereign wealth funds from across the region will play a key role in establishing the fund, adding such participation would be seen as a "kind of seal of approval".

The agency also hopes the fund will help tourism to develop in a controlled manner. "If you build too quickly in a chaotic way, as a private investor you can get your gains quite quickly, but as a destination you can lose a bit of the image and it can be a problem," Mr Senhaji said.

"It's interesting that in the tourism sector you have different players with different investment horizons. You have the developer who comes in with the three-year investment horizon. You have the operator who's there for 10 to 20 years, and then you have the local population, which is 50 to 100 years." Analysts said the fund was an innovative means of raising cash for the sector.

"This fund is going to be really managed as a private fund," said Jalil Mekouar, the managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, Middle East and Africa. "It will have the back-up of the government and it will have the government injecting money in it, but it will really be managed as a fund."

Emaar's projects, under development by its subsidiary Emaar Morocco, include the Tinja development, which is planned as a residential community with large tourism and retail components near Tangier International Airport.

The group's Saphira development is a similar kind of project being developed on the Atlantic coastline in Rabat.

Emaar Morocco has also joined Onapar, part of the ONA Group, to develop Amelkis II and III and Bahia Golf Beach, which are luxury residential golfing complexes.

ADFD's interests in Morocco include a 17 per cent stake in the Emirates-Moroccan Palmare Company, which owns a four-star tourist village with 328 rooms, restaurants, cafes and recreational facilities in Marrakech.

ADFD also owns 33.71 per cent of Delma Company, which owns the five-star Casablanca Sheraton.

Mr Mekouar said last month's terrorist attack in Marrakech was unlikely to have an impact on investment into the venture.