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Morocco on track for high-speed rail

By David Morgan

Friday, 19 February 2010 17:20

High-speed rail will soon be a familiar feature of the Moroccan landscape once a key transport infrastructure project is completed.

The project is set to radically cut travel times between Tangier and the country’s commercial capital Casablanca from more than five hours to just over two.

By 2016, some eight million passengers per year are expected to use the new high-speed line, Chief Executive of Moroccan National Railways, Mohammed Rabie Khlie told the Maghreb Press Agency, Morocco’s official news.

The new line is the first step in Morocco’s master plan which has ambitious aims at building over 1,500km of new tracks by 2035 as it moves to upgrade its national rail infrastructure network.

Morocco has maintained the most sophisticated rail apparatus in North Africa and is continuing to invest in rail transport to strengthen tourism and also to develop industry and trade links across the wider Mediterranean region. At present Morocco has some 2,000km of track.

The Kingdom hopes to be the first country in the Middle East to have a high-speed rail network on a par with Europe.

The Moroccan government is convinced of the need for the expansion of high-speed rail services. "Faced with the rapid growth of rail transport, we closely studied the most suitable technology for developing the sector," Transport Minister Karim Ghellab said in Tangier.

"The study concluded that there would be higher socio-economic productivity for the high-speed technology in comparison with classical railways," Ghellab said at a recent signing ceremony of the contract for the planned high-speed rail project.

"In spite of the former's reasonable additional cost, it is characterised by economic features that greatly exceed the advantages of the latter."

"Work on the high-speed train will kick off next June, while the exploitation of the project will begin in December 2015," the minister added at the ceremony, which was presided over by King Mohammed VI.

The contract signed on 1 February between the government and the National Railway Office is for a 20 billion-dirham, 2010-2015 project under a wider public programme for social and economic development. It amounts to a huge railway upgrade scheme stretching over six years.

The project is to be jointly funded by the national budget, the Hassan II Fund for Social and Economic Development, and foreign loans. A total of 33 billion dirhams will be invested in developing rail transport as a whole.

"The high-speed train project would cost 20 billion dirhams ($2.47 billion), of which half will go for the line infrastructure and 5.6 billion for railway equipment while the remaining 4.4 billion will be spent in the rolling stock," the transport ministry stated.

The ministry did not say from which foreign firms it would buy the trains and other equipment needed to build and service the planned line.

Industry sources in Rabat said they believed that French railway operator SNCF, heavy engineering group Alstom SA and Bombardier Inc were among the foreign companies vying for part or all of the work on the project.

MEED quoted France’s Alstom as stating that it expects to be awarded the contract to provide rolling stock for the $2.5bn railway line by the end of March.

Alstom Transport submitted its technical and commercial proposals for the high-speed trains in December 2009 and has been holding talks with Rabat officials since then.

“The negotiations should lead to the rolling stock contract signature during the first quarter,” according to a company source quoted by MEED.

Alstom is already building a high-speed rail link between Tangiers and Marrakech.

Moroccan government officials stressed that the railway project dovetailed efforts to bolster economic growth and fight the impact of the global economic slowdown.

The government plans to expand investment spending 20.4 percent this year to spur economic growth of 3.5 percent and offset the impact of the downturn in its main trade partners, mostly in Europe, officials added.

Official estimates show that the economy grew by more than 5 percent last year, almost the same rate as the previous year, as the country garnered its largest cereals crop in 50 years.

The farming sector accounts for up to 17 percent of Morocco's gross domestic product and is the main employer.

Early last month, the state forecasting body, the High Planning Commission, said that it expected the cereals harvest to fall to at least 7 million tonnes this year from 10.2 million tonnes in the previous crop.

Writing in the Railway Gazette, Mohammed Rabie Khlie outlined Morocco’s long-term plans for rail. “High speed is one of the top priorities for operators across the world, as rail seeks to harness the benefits of cutting-edge technology,” the railways executive stated.

“The introduction of high speed rail in Morocco has become all the more necessary as our country has chosen to build closer ties with Europe through trade and is active as a member of the World Trade Organisation.

“The removal of tariff and customs barriers and the dismantling of economic frontiers between countries are a powerful stimulus to rail modernisation, and the choice of a rail tunnel for the fixed link between Europe and Africa beneath the Strait of Gibraltar points to rail as the means for accelerating the integration of transport infrastructure on both continents,” he continued.

“This is the wider background to domestic planning policy where future railway infrastructure projects are firmly concentrated on building high speed lines to serve Morocco's major transport corridors. This will be the major challenge for the next two or three decades, as there can be no doubt that high speed is the future of rail in Morocco.

“Our high speed master plan sets out the programme for building 1 500 km of high speed lines by 2030. Forming the backbone of the nation's transport infrastructure, the high speed network will comprise two routes. The first will serve the Atlantic corridor from Tanger to Agadir via Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech and Essaouira. The second will form part of a high speed corridor across North Africa, running from Rabat to Oujda via Fès, and then on to Alger, Tunis and Tripoli,” Rabie Khlie said.

Global Arab Network

This report will appear in Arab-British Business, the fortnightly bulletin of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce.