The kingdom unrolls the red carpet to French companies

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With its ramparts which overlook the Atlantic, Essaouira (Morocco) is today a popular city of European and American tourists. But Grégoire Aubron knew the city before it was fashionable. More than 15 years that this French hotelier has worked here. And upon arrival, finding fresh products or simply buying vegetables was not really a pleasure. “Me, when I arrived, there was only a small supermarket and they disconnected the fridges at night to save electricity”recalls the Frenchman, manager of the hotel “Le Jardin des Douars”.

These misadventures seem to be ancient history now. Because in recent years, the French entrepreneur has seen Essaouira, like all of Morocco, modernize at high speed: “The roads, but also all that is fiber optics, the electrical network with stable current, and the supply of water. It is still at the base of things which were a little chaotic about twenty years ago and which today really improved”he assures.

A metamorphosis that pushes the hotelier to consider the opening of a second establishment. And in the Kingdom, Grégoire Aubron is far from being the only Frenchman to want to make his affairs grow. Attracted by the football world cup markets that Morocco will co -organize in 2030 and reassured by diplomatic warming between Paris and Rabat, tricolor companies invest en masse in the country: 10 billion euros in contracts signed last year for large groups like Totalenergies, Engie or Alstom.

An economic honeymoon that creates vocations with entrepreneurs hitherto installed in France, like Franck Roguier, which we meet just after an appointment at the Bank. “There, we are going to do for the blue cards. We finalized the opening of the bank account. It is a little longer than in France. There are a lot of papers”he explains. The Frenchman has just arrived in Morocco to set up a subsidiary of his company specializing in the design of parts for industry. For the moment, it has only one employee and is a bit lost in the meanders of the Moroccan economic world. Regularly, he therefore has an appointment at the French Chamber of Commerce in Morocco. Like him, 3,600 companies come to seek advice to participate in calls for tenders.

To succeed, French entrepreneurs can count on another weight of weight: the Moroccan state. Temporary tax exemption from companies, public subsidies up to 30 % of overall investment. The kingdom does everything to attract foreign capital. And the French company that has understood it for a long time, it is Renault. It has a huge Tangier factory where Dacia Sandero are manufactured.“There are 1,325 cars produced every day. It is one of the group’s largest factories. We are in the top 3”Indicates Mohamed Bachiri, Managing Director of Renault Group in Morocco.

Over the past ten years, exchanges between France and Morocco have multiplied by two. In the kingdom, French companies now employ more than 150,000 people.