Market and product

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Morocco will open a special zone for the phosphate industry and hopes to attract 50 billion dirhams ($6 billion) of investments, said Abdeltif Loudyi, the secretary-general of Morocco’s Finance Ministry.

“We will establish a free investment center, a new city, in the place where many Moroccan phosphate mines are located,” Loudyi said in an interview on April 7 in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The area would be used for exporting raw phosphate and converting it to fertilizer and phosphoric acid, Loudyi said.

The North African country will probably hold an international tender to attract investors this year, and build a pipe to transport the phosphate more cheaply, he said.

Exports of phosphate, which can be used for fertilizers and crop nutrients, are a key driver of economic growth for Morocco, along with tourism and agriculture. Prices of diammonium phosphate, used on grain crops, have risen about 40 percent in the past 12 months to $460 a ton.

Morocco plans to sell bonds on international markets this year to help finance a budget deficit that’s expected to widen to 4 percent of economic output, from 2.2 percent in 2009, Loudyi said without giving details.

He also said the country hopes to attract foreign investment in renewable energy, especially solar energy, from countries such as Germany and France.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/, By Maram Mazen and Ola Galal, Editors: Ben Holland, Karl Maier)