Tangier Med prepares for expansion with an investment of more than 700 million euros
Morocco has the firm conviction to make Tangier Med one of the most important ports in the world, if it has not already done so. The Tangier Med Port Authority (TMPA), the Moroccan State company in charge of the development of the Tangier Med Port Complex (TMPC), already has the backing of the World Bank to set up an extension project which should make a leap in the dimensions of the port.
How will the extension of Tangier Med be financed?
The key points on which most of the efforts are to be focused are the capacity for private vehicles and lorries, as well as a thorough modernisation of the import zone. The World Bank has informed in an official communiqué that it intends to allocate a sum of 714 million euros to various contributors.
The International Finance Cooperation (IFC) will cover a large part of the investment with a loan of €100 million. To this must be added an amount of 255 million from commercial credits that will benefit from the coverage of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) with the support of the NSHOE, a World Bank tool that "protects against losses arising from the default of a sovereign debt".
J.P. Morgan has requested the assistance of the MIGA, which specialises in this type of operation. Its contribution will cover a loan of up to EUR 255 million, earmarked entirely for the enlargement project. In addition, the MIGA guarantee extends over a period of 15 years covering up to 95% of TMPA's payment obligations.
Tangier Med as a world hub port
The port of Tangier Med has long been established as the most important port in Africa and the Mediterranean, but Morocco is not satisfied with that. They want to turn it into one of the basic pillars of international trade. It has direct connections with 180 ports and 70 countries, which puts it at the head of the whole continent.
Its numbers are difficult for any other port to replicate, and will be even more so after the completion of the project to be implemented. Currently its volume of trade exceeds 100 million tonnes and 7 million Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) containers, a measure used for the measurement of goods. The intention is to continue to increase this number, as well as that of vehicles, one of the most recurrent sectors in Tangier Med.
The progress of the Moroccan port has been gradual. In May 2023, it overtook the port of Valencia as the most important port in the Mediterranean, when it succeeded in surpassing it by more than 50% in the volume of goods. It also overtook Piraeus, consolidating its position as the leading port in the region. However, its leadership in this field is expected to continue to grow exponentially.
Rabat's commitment to Tangier Med is total. Only 2020 and 2021, both years conditioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, have managed to slow down data that have grown year after year. In fact, a report of the World Bank itself called "World Container Port Performance Index", ranks the port of Alaoui as the fourth most efficient in the world, only surpassed by the Yangshan terminal (China) in first place, Salalah (Oman) and Khalifa (Abu Dhabi) in second and third place respectively.
