Cars are placed on a production line inside Renault factory outside of Tangier, Morocco, Monday, April 29, 2024. . The North African kingdom supplies more cars to Europe than China, India or Japan, and has the capacity to produce 700,000 vehicles a year. A train that travels from rural northern Morocco to a port on the Mediterranean Sea carries no passengers.
“We didn’t export one car 15 years ago. Now it’s the first exporting sector in the country,” Minister of Industry and Trade Ryad Mezzour said in an interview with The Associated Press. Major automakers pay unionized factory workers less in Morocco than they do in Europe. But even with salaries one-fourth the size of France’s 1,766.92-euro monthly minimum wage, the jobs pay more than the median income in Morocco. The industry employs 220,000 — a small but sizable chunk of the more than 200,000 agricultural jobs the country is losing annually amid a six-year drought.
Moroccan officials have sought investment from both East and West, trying to lure industry players from China, Europe and the United States as they now race to produce affordable electric vehicles at scale. China's BYD — the world’s largest electric vehicle maker — has at least twice announced plans to build factories in the country that have stalled before starting.
“We’re predisposed to manufacturing cars for customers in our sphere. And the day they decide they need electric vehicles, we will,” he said.
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