Agadir – Morocco’s Head of Government Saad Eddine El Othmani has said that the country’s administrative reforms look promising, with “very encouraging” results when it comes to the processing of investment proposals and other administrative documents.
El Othmani, who made his remarks at this week’s weekly Governing Council meeting, notably discussed Morocco’s efforts towards digitizing its public administration to accelerate the country’s economic recovery.
In his presentation, the Head of Government focussed on the reform of regional investment centers (CRIs), and their handling of investor appeals whose files have been rejected by various regional investment commissions.
El Othmani pointed to measures enacted for the reforms in 2019, notably the creation of a unified regional investment commission (CRUI), as necessary steps towards the path to economic recovery that Morocco is currently on.
The Moroccan head of government lauded the completion of measures undertaken in 2019, which paved the way towards economic recovery. The transformation of CRIs into autonomous public establishments and their work in 2020 led to “very encouraging” results, underlined El Othmani.
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In recent years, the Moroccan government has been working hard to present the country as a lucrative destination for investment. In November 2020, Morocco’s Ministry of Industry signed 17 investment agreements in different sectors totaling at MAD 857 million ($95 million)
El Othmani also presented data on the state of investment in Morocco during the meeting. The CRUI saw 700 meetings in 2020, with each region holding on average five meetings per month, according to the data.
Another positive indicator was the reduction in the rate of file processing, which today stands at 27 days, compared to more than 100 days before the reforms. He also noted that out of over 3,200 investment propositions, more than 68% have been approved.
El Othmani explained that out of the remaining 1,009 unapproved files, 28% of them were retrospectively approved upon a request for review from the investors.
The figures indicate the increasing rate of digitization among CRIs, which will only grow with the adoption of the digital platform CRI Invest, later in 2021. The platform will simplify the review and appeal procedures while allowing the cases to be processed electronically.
