El coronavirus encalla en los puertos de Marruecos

The health crisis caused by the coronavirus and the general paralysis of the economy have not made a significant dent in the main Moroccan ports, Tangier Med and Casablanca, and activity is gradually returning to smaller ones. With data from the National Ports Agency (ANP), commercial exchanges through Moroccan ports had increased in the third week of April by 5.5% year-on-year to reach 28.7 million tonnes, according to a note issued by the state body. It was precisely this Thursday that the ANP made public its balance sheet for 2019, which is frankly positive: a growth in activity of 3.2%. And in the air, optimism. Government sources cited by the semi-official Le360 media say there will be no more confinement after May 20, the date set for the end of the state of health emergency.

The good data of the beginning of the year are due, according to the note issued by the ANP on the 21st, to the massive arrivals of cereals - which registered a growth of 34% -, the traffic of phosphates and fertilizers and the maintenance of the traffic of containers (standard EVP). The solidity of port activity is an encouraging reality for the whole of the Moroccan economy, which has been highly disturbed by the crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The first of these, Tanger Med, is the most important cargo port in Morocco and the second in Africa. All the services of the port activity have remained operational in recent weeks, confirmed in an interview with the state agency MAP the director of the port Tanger Med Passagers, Kamal Lakhmas. In an information collected by the portal H24INFO, the director specifies the normalization of container traffic in the area of export and import and in transhipment, as well as the flow of trucks of goods (according to TIR standards) in both directions. 

In this sense, Tanger Med put in place a business continuity plan to guarantee port needs and operations, said Lakhmas in the same interview. In this sense, last April 3 - at the height of the pandemic - the weekly Jeune Afrique highlighted that the activity at Tanger Med was "identical" to the one before the crisis. 

"Tanger Med Zones maintains its industrial activities and prepares for the decontamination," said Ilham Khalil, director of Tanger Free Zone, in an interview published on Friday by the Moroccan digital magazine Ecoactu. The boost of the free zone in the city of the Strait is due to the activity in the fields of pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, aeronautics, automotive, plastic engineering, food and services, reported the economic weekly Challenge. "Tanger Med's industrial platform is operational in order to continue to support the import and export activities of international and national companies located in its six zones of activity (...) Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have implemented a business continuity plan which we are executing effectively with all the ecosystem partners, industrial partners and clients," explains Khalil. 

The fact is that Tanger Med Zones has put in place a series of rigorous health measures to support its customers' activities, says Challenge. Multinationals and local companies have implemented a business continuity plan. Among the measures adopted: the reduction of operational staff to the minimum necessary, the provision of personal protective equipment, the implementation of social distancing measures within production lines, etc. As the aforementioned weekly magazine points out, the industrialists have carried out two strategies: adjusting production capacity to market demand with their usual activity and establishing new production lines to provide essential equipment during the health emergency period, including protective masks, office screens, packaging to support the local food market, disinfection products, etc.  The Tangerine platform has a thousand exporting companies and generates more than 80,000 jobs.

In this sense, the operator FRS, in charge of the regular management of several maritime routes between Spain and Morocco, has continued to operate since the beginning of the crisis. According to the Moroccan digital company LesEco, some 40,000 tons of goods have been transported by the operator through seven ships between the ports of Tanger Med and Algeciras. The situation is not bad on the other side of the Strait either. Despite the coronavirus crisis, in the port of the aforementioned city in Cadiz - which competes with Tanger Med - the data was similar to that before the health crisis. 

Moreover, the other great port of Morocco, Casablanca, has been operating normally in the last days, states the specialized Moroccan newspaper L'Économiste. Between the 14th and 26th of April at least 30 cargo ships arrived at the economic capital of the country or were waiting to leave the port of Casablanca. Between 27 April and 11 May, 31 ships are expected to arrive. According to data from the ANP, Casablanca is the port that recorded the highest growth in the first months of the year compared to the previous year: 5.7%. It was followed by Jorf Lasfar (12.4%) and Agadir (5.8%). 

Other small ports are trying to recover normal figures and activity. This is the case of the port of Essaouira, on April 20 the authorities that manage it took the decision to relaunch its fishing activities; 80% of coastal fishing has already resumed. The port of the Atlantic town had limited its activities several weeks ago following the measures taken by the government to fight the pandemic, reports L'Economiste. In January of this year, work on the expansion of the port of Essaouira was completed. Since 21 March, a new maritime transport line has been connecting the port of Agadir, dominated by fruit and vegetable exports, with the French port of Port-Vendres, reports the same Moroccan economic newspaper. The suspension of road traffic of foodstuffs has strengthened the position of the ports as a competitive alternative.

On the other hand, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will allocate this year 40 million euros to the Moroccan National Ports Agency (ANP). This is a non-sovereign loan aimed at modernising the structures of the ports of Agadir, Kenitra, Casablanca, Sidi Ifni, Tan-Tan and Larache, reports the daily Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb. It will be accompanied by a grant from the Global Environment Facility of 5.7 million euros.

According to data released Thursday by Morocco's National Ports Agency, 2019 continued the positive trend recorded the previous year. In the whole of last year, 88 million tons of goods were reached, which means a growth of 3.2%, equivalent to more than 2.7 million tons. The figure is explained by the 7.2% increase in imports. The Agency for Development, Maintenance and Modernisation, a state body created in 2006, exercises its powers over all the ports in Morocco with the exception of Tanger Med. 

This increase has an impact on the financial data of the ANP: turnover increased by 4.1% to a total of 1,853 million dirhams in 2019 (almost 172 million euros) compared to 1,781 million dirhams (around 165 million euros) the previous year. In addition, operating costs reached 1,748 million dirhams in 2019, also up 4.1% on the previous year. According to the ANP's note, this is explained by the increase in service provision, the drop in maintenance costs in the ports, the rise in maintenance costs for movable and immovable property and the drop in personnel costs, in addition to the increases in depreciation and amortization charges.  Finally, the ANP's note highlights the 31.3% growth in the agency's own self-financing capacity. 

Finally, container traffic rose by 2.5% from 12.1 million tonnes in 2018 to 12.4 million tonnes in 2019. By sector, last year there was a 12.6% growth in coal traffic, which reached a volume of 10.08 million tons versus 8.95 million tons in the previous fiscal year. Sulfur traffic also increased by 20% to 6.6 million tons.