U.S. and Morocco Talk Trade

Amid Commerce Department reports which show that trade with Morocco could nearly double this year, a trade delegation of top-level Moroccan officials and businessmen visited the U.S. for four days in mid-April for meetings with American government officials and business executives.

First on the agenda was a two-day meeting in Washington of the U.S.-Morocco Joint Committee on Economic Relations, chaired jointly by Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige and Azzedine Guessous, Moroccan minister for Industry and Tourism. The Committee met to put the finishing touches on a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) similar to that signed with the government of Egypt last June—which would provide a range of investment incentives for U.S. firms doing business in Morocco.

According to Commerce Department figures, Morocco is one of the brightest markets in North Africa for U.S. firms. American exports to the Kingdom totaled $396.5 million in 1982, and, if present upward trends are sustained, this figure could double in 1983. Trade figures issued by the Commerce Department show that U.S. sales to Morocco in the first two months of this year are just under $110 million.

The BIT would provide assurances to U.S. firms that their investments in Morocco would "receive treatment equal to that accorded investments by companies of Morocco in the U.S.," according to Commerce Department sources. By helping to stabilize the legal environment in which U.S. investors operate, the BIT would reduce some of the perceived risks of committing capital and management to Morocco and would ease the free transfer of capital.

The Moroccan delegation—which was headed by the Minister of Economic Affairs, Taieb Bencheikh, and composed of the fourteen heads of Moroccan agencies dealing with trade and industry—worked with their American counterparts to hammer out key points in the BIT aimed at strengthening the position of investors in such activities as the establishment of branches, agencies or factories—, the acquisition of companies; undertaking contracts—, leasing property; and the borrowing of funds from local financial institutions. The BIT would also provide guidelines to compensate U.S. companies for expropriation or nationalization, including provisions for settling investment disputes between a foreign investor and a government.

The Moroccan officials then travelled to New York, where they met up with a Moroccan private sector delegation to attend a day-long forum with top U.S. corporate executives, hosted by Chase Manhattan Bank. Mounir Bensaid, director of the Moroccan Office for Industrial Development in New York, told The Washington Report that members of the private business delegation—consisting of 35 corporate presidents—were selected to represent the industries of "agribusiness, machinery equipment, electronics, textiles, leather products, hotels, and tourism concerns." He said that the Moroccan government is eager to make American businessmen aware of the recent liberalization of its Industrial Investment Code, which he said is aimed at increasing U.S. investments and has already eased restrictions to permit 100 percent foreign ownership in most industrial ventures.