Before being appointed to his current post, the Cellulose du Maroc and Polytechnique Zurich graduate has worked for a long time in the private sector, both in Morocco and abroad. He is also a member of the Istiql?l Party and the Alliance of Economists.

Mezzour started his career as an engineer with the ABB group in Switzerland in 1996. Three years later, he joined the consulting firm Deloitte as a consultant.

He then returned to Morocco and joined Othman Benjelloun’s Finance.com group, where he was put in charge of Budget, a subsidiary specialising in car rental services.

Two years later, Mezzour headed for Somed, a Moroccan-Emirati group where he held the highly versatile position of adviser to the chairman. He later became the Managing Director of Suzuki Morocco.

In 2013, Nizar Baraka, the current Secretary General of Istiqlal and president of the Conseil Economique, Social et Environnemental (CESE) by King Mohammed VI, called on Mezzour to head his cabinet.

He filled this position until 2019, when he became director of cabinet for the then minister of industry, Moulay Hafid Elalamy.

Elalamy was the architect of Morocco’s industrial acceleration plan and managed the Covid-19 pandemic by launching the concept of industrial sovereignty. His successor, Mezzour, has made this concept his guiding principle.

The Africa Report: What are the main thrusts of the kingdom’s industrial policy?

Mezzour: Our industrial policy is based on several pillars:

• Openness to the world
• World-class infrastructure
• Agility
• The ability to mobilise to bring projects to fruition in record time
• Human capital

This involves creating efficient industrial zones (as well as training qualified employees) in consultation with economic operators to take account of their needs. We are entering a new industrial era, in which sovereignty is both an end in itself and a means of creating lasting, high-quality jobs while upgrading our offering to attract foreign investors.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, sovereignty has become the government’s credo. How is this idea being put into practice? 

Sovereignty means developing our tools and our production base. The aim is to strengthen our own capacities, which means having multiple, reliable sources of supply.

In terms of health sovereignty, for example, we currently produce around 50% of our needs. We are diversifying our range of medicines while developing new products, such as vaccines. Africa’s largest vaccine plant is about to be inaugurated.

What are the advantages of Morocco’s industrial fabric for foreign investors?

Morocco has the capacity to produce, to extremely high standards of quality, everything that can be produced, from aeronautics to the automotive and space industries. The country has the largest port in the Mediterranean and Africa, as well as a highly efficient motorway network. The kingdom has also proven its ability to produce low-cost energy, the fruit of a strategy that we have been working on for over 40 years.

Another important global trend is the reconfiguration and shortening of value chains. Morocco is ideally placed to win a market share.

Last but not least, Moroccan know-how and technical skills are highly valued and in great demand around the world. All this tells us that we have the means to achieve our ambitions.

There is a lot of talk in Morocco about diversifying geopolitical partners. Is this also the case when it comes to investments?

Spain has been our leading trading partner for several years now. This is due to our geographical proximity, but also to the fact that our industrial bases, particularly in the automotive and textile sectors, are highly integrated.

There has also been an acceleration in American investment, which, in terms of flows, is becoming one of the largest.

There has been, in fact, a diversification of partners, not because we want to work with some more than others, but because Morocco has become an attractive country for investors.

The Israeli state is interested in Morocco as a production and export platform for the European Union, particularly in the automotive sector. Are there any concrete projects with this new potential economic partner in the works?

We’re still in the early stages. But there are great prospects with Israeli investors, whether in tech, aerospace, automotive or many other sectors. We look forward to seeing this partnership take shape.

Why have you set up a national strategy for the decarbonising industry?

Back in 1992, at the Rio Conference, the King – who was Crown Prince at the time – announced the Kingdom’s ambitions in this area. It was very avant-garde at the time. Morocco is a country subject to water stress. We owe it to ourselves to be in tune with nature.

Decarbonisation is also, for us, a tool for sovereignty and competitiveness. Renewable energies (such as wind, solar, etc.) exist in Morocco in greater abundance than elsewhere – and with access to onshore rather than offshore production, this reduces costs – and are much more competitive than carbon-based energy.

What are Morocco’s strengths in this area?

One of the major challenges is to reduce our carbon footprint for future generations. Morocco has significant renewable energy production capacity, and is close to a major consumer base: Europe.

What are Morocco’s ambitions in terms of electric battery production?

Several operators have expressed their desire to set up large production units in the country. We have the raw materials: phosphate, cobalt and manganese. We also have renewable energies to power the plants, which is an advantage in terms of reducing their carbon footprint.

Inflation is expected to be below 5% in 2023.

Moroccans are being hit hard by inflation. What is the government doing to curb it? 

The government started a term in office facing a triple crisis: the Covid-19 pandemic; a drought on an unprecedented scale; and the inflationary spiral resulting from the consequences of the war in Ukraine.

We have managed to keep inflation at fairly low levels (6.6% in 2022) and we should be below 5% this year. We have also managed to introduce an energy shield to guarantee stable prices for all households and businesses. Tariffs have been the same since 2017. We are nevertheless aware that our fellow citizens feel they are suffering a significant loss of purchasing power, so we are working on this.

In what way?

We have drawn up a fairly dense government programme on employment, with short-term, medium-term, and long-term approaches. In the short term, for example, we launched the Awrach programme in 2021, which created 100,000 jobs in its first year.

The second aspect is industrial employment. We want to create one million jobs during this mandate, including 400,000 net industrial jobs. In the space of 17 months, we have already created more than 100,000 jobs, so we are confident that we will succeed.