Brussels, 19/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) inaugurated on 16 January in Casablanca (Morocco) the first of a series of conferences involving the private sector in the EuroMed area on the subject of the role that the FEMIP (Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership Facility) can play, managed by the EIB in encouraging cooperation between companies on both shores of the Mediterranean. The Casablanca Conference, on the theme "the development of business, the essential dimension of the Moroccan economy" is organised in collaboration with the "Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc (CGEM)" with the participation of EBRD especially, in the person of its president, Jean Lamierre, and BAD (African Development Bank) Vice President Théodore N'Kodo. The EIB vice-president, Philippe de Fontaine Vive, presented at the opening the various instruments available to business and gave a briefing on recent measures - approved in Naples by the ministers in December - enlarging FEMIP's scope. The Moroccan minister for the economy, El Mossadaq, for his part, presented the state of progress of the programmes for preparing businesses in his country for market opening, which will be complete in 2010. Discussions took place around two round tables, one on the theme "promoting private investment" and the other on "banking and financing tools" to the service of EuroMed cooperation.
On the sidelines of the conference, the EIB and the CDG ("Caisse de dépôts et consignation française") signed a declaration of intent for the establishment of an investment fund to the benefit of Moroccan businesses.
In parallel to this effort to heighten awareness at the FEMIP in the southern rim countries, where the wish is to attract investors, the EIB is organising a second conference, on 22 January in London (targeting the potential investors likely to be interested in projects in one of the countries of the Mediterranean region, whether they are European enterprises or financiers or business entrepreneurs originally from a country on the southern shores of the Mediterranean but now established in Europe.