 I would try to make my presentation as concise as possible. I don't do miracles, so I hope that you won't hold me for this. Before I start, let me first congratulate Ireland for what the government just announced a few days ago. I mean, I know that you guys, on the 15th of December, you will not be, you know, hold by any agreement or with the EU, which I believe that that's great, which means that the economic reforms you have undertaken for the last few years are paying off. And it's always tough to ask everyone in a country to make a lot of efforts, but at the end when it pays off, then it was worth it. That's the way I see it. And that's basically what we are doing also in Morocco. We have been, for more than a decade now, really engaged in many and deep reforms that I would try to highlight in my presentation. So allow me to stand up, because, you know, I'm a bit like the Italian side. If you hold me, if I can't move, then I won't be able to speak. So, first of all, Mary has talked about Morocco. It's a 32 million population. It's, you know, just based, I believe, in the middle of the world. I mean, everyone can see the world, you know, it's rounded, so everyone can see it as the middle of the world. But we believe we are in the middle of the world, so just, you know, in the gates to Africa, very close to Europe, and I'll show you a slide where I will highlight more what I'm saying. Very, our neighbor is Spain. We're happy to have Spain as a neighbor. It's in the ambassador here. So let me make sure that you understand how we value the improved relationship with Spain. GDP per capita is around 2,200 euros. This is not purchasing power parity. It's just real GDP. It's around $3,000 drawing, but we believe we can do much better. If I take Morocco, we'd be really focusing on the economic side, because we believe that if you have a strong economy, then you can address the needs of the population, because we believe that if you have a strong economy, then you are less affected by extremism, you're less affected by, you know, things that can happen in the region, and I'll come back to what happened in our street later on. So in order to make sure that you have a strong economy, you need to have a very stable political environment. To have a very stable political environment, you need to make sure that people accept first the regime where they are, for if they don't accept it, then you oppress them and look on the inside. You know, things happen. That's what happened in Egypt. That's what happened in Tunisia. If you take Morocco, Morocco is a monarchy. In fact, it's the second eldest kingdom in the world. Which is the eldest kingdom in the world. In fact, it's Denmark. So we had the second eldest kingdom in the world. We have had the monarchy for 12 centuries now. It's a bike-cameral parliament system. We have two chambers, you know, just the equivalent of the Congress and the Senate. We call them chandrel deputation des conseillers. They are doing sometimes the same job, but because, for example, all the laws are voted by the two chambers. We have had, and I come back to that new constitution in the end of November, the end of 2011, that I believe as an opposition party, is really on par with the most advanced, you know, constitutions in the world. Maybe not the most advanced one, but really on par with many developed countries in the world. So we have in Morocco a multi-party system, and believe it or not, we have more than 85,000 NGOs in Morocco. And the 85,000 NGOs are working in so many fields. They're working to protect the child, to fight for women rights, to fight for women rights, to, against poverty, against whatever you believe. I mean, 85,000 is a lot. It's a big number. The other thing that, as I said, constitution came and really guaranteed the human rights, the separation between the powers, and that was a big, big issue, because if the executive power has also the judicial power, then who makes the arbitration at one point in time? So we made sure that we now have really those significant elements in the constitution. Of course, after that, and we can talk about it in the discussion, you know, voting a law is not applying a law. And then we'll have to make sure that the spirit of the constitution is really applied, you know, through what we call the organic laws, but also through the daily practice. And if you ask me, I say the jury is still out, so we'll see what will happen. But this, you know, the vote of the constitution is really, really an end result of a process that started many years ago. And that's why I have this chart, just to make you understand that it's really democratic and social transition that has happened since 1998. What happened in 1998? I mean, King Hassan, who is the father, Lady King Hassan is the father of Mohammed VI, asked the opposition parties to come and govern the country and enter the government. My party was one of those. In fact, I'm from a party that fought the Hassan regime for 40 years. In fact, I'm a party from, you know, who was constituent from one point in time, by Mehdi Ben-Barka, I'm sure that this name, you know, rings a bell in many heads. We see it don't know where Mehdi Ben-Barka, how he was killed and where he was buried. So we've seen asking for that. But so, but 1998, I believe that was a change. That was a shift. Hassan understood that he had to make sure that when he's not here anymore, you know, he dies, then succession can happen, smooth transition can happen. I believe that really was one of the motives where he called the government, the opposition parties to come. So back in 1988, they came and they, everyone really played, you know, its role in that partition in a good way, in good sense. Because then in 2000, when Hassan II disappeared, when he died, then when King Mohammed VI came, there was smooth transition. Morocco didn't go into turmoil. And to give to Caesar what belongs to the king, what belongs to the king, when he came, I believe that he started a process that brought us here today, you know, a peaceful country, no turmoil. Arab Spring didn't affect us that much and that explains, I give more details about that. But you can see in this chart, what he did in the last 10 years. I mean, of course, he didn't do that alone. I mean, parties were involved, NGOs were involved. Sometimes good pressure, sometimes, you know, strong pressure. But at the end of the day, it's working. And if you just, I highlighted a few things in red, because this is the one that I want to talk about. For example, back in 2004, you know, there is, sorry, back in 2004, the laser is not working. The instance for equity and reconciliation, the IER. What was this instance? It's exactly the same process that happened in South Africa, the apartheid thing, where basically they had this neutral commission going and understanding what happened. Kiering Mohamed VI asked the NGOs, you know, personality individuals to constitute this IER. And they went through all the country talking with people who were really hurt by the regime and how to compensate them. And mostly, how this cannot happen again. Because we have what we call a designated plan, which is, you know, our worst days in Morocco between the early 70s to late 90s, where basically opposition parties, for example, fought the regime. Many people disappeared. Many people went to prison to jail. Many people were killed. So we had this fight between the opposition parties and the regime at that time. So Kiering Mohamed VI came and he was very courageous to do that because basically that was under his father, you know, supervision or under his father, ruling that those things happened. But the process went on. And I believe that this process allowed us to turn the page, to move into the future, not stay in the past and still fighting for those things. There are still some files that have to be completely cleared. I mean, Benjamin Bakker's file is one of them. But at least it was very well done. 2004 also the free trade agreement with Europe, then after that we also had the free trade agreement with the U.S. In Morocco it has a free trade agreement with Europe, free trade agreement with the U.S. and even an advanced status with the U.S., with Europe. So which basically, I believe, we are the only country that has these three things. The family code, Mudawana, this is, again, a very courageous action from the king where basically we modernized the family code where basically the women rights were granted. Still more things to do, but I believe that was a big jump and that was, I'm saying, very courageous because that was, if you have a religious interpretation coming from one of the books, then it's very hard to make people understand they should change. So that was, he had to put all his weight into the balance to make that family code much better and to protect women rights. The National Initiative for Human Development, this is basically where we decided to have a poverty map in Morocco and to target the most vulnerable parts of the population. And today we are bringing all the, I mean, a lot of help to those regions and we are moving now to create a project that will generate revenues for them, not just leave them fish, but also how to fish. So that's basically what we are doing. And 2008 we had this central instance for prevention of corruption. We have also our problems in there. We are trying to move now this central instance has been changed to the council against corruption in the new constitution. And in 2011 it was a very interesting thing happening which is basically we decided and King Mohammed VI again was one, promoting it and to go through regionalization where basically Morocco will dissipate into regions and all those regions will have certain autonomy, will have power to move forward. So maybe we will not go as extreme as, you know, the Spanish model but we will be between, basically we studied Spain, we studied Turkey, we studied what happened in France and we will have something Germany also. We will have something that is a mixture of these different models. In here we also pointed to special status for our southern provinces which is called like the western Sahara, we call it our southern provinces, where basically we are saying we are going to go for an extended autonomy in those in this region, more than in the other regions where basically they will have their own judicial executive parliamentary system they can, you know, allow, allocate resources to the becoming development of the region but they will be of course under the Moroccan sovereignty. So that was our proposal to the United Nations to try to solve that problem that we inherited from the colonization back in the 50s. So that's basically and of course as I told you in 2011, new constitution. Everything has, all this process I believe has helped us avoid the trouble, the turmoil that happened in the other countries in the region and if you allow me to summarize it in three main reasons why that the Arab Spring didn't have the same effect I will tell you first because there is a real bound between Moroccan people and the monarchy. I told you 12 centuries of monarchy. I also need to tell you that when King Mohammed V came and the French were criminalizing with the Spanish part of Morocco they proposed to King Mohammed V to govern and they refused so they exiled him to Madagascar at that time. So that created a real strong bound between the Moroccan people and the monarchy. The second reason this chapter is really about King Mohammed VI when he came as I told you it was very close to the people and he launched so many reforms so there is legitimacy of the ruler as what happened in Egypt or what happened in Tunisia. The second reason has to do with the role that the political parties played. My part for example as I told you we had these fights with the regime so our Arab Spring happened years before and it was not in the streets in the form of protests but it was really fighting for human rights fighting for freedom of speech fighting for freedom of association fighting for 4444 and that's how I told you so many things happened so people sent to jail killed and so on and so forth. So we had those spaces of freedom not as what happened in other countries and the third reason the NGOs, 85,000 NGOs being very close to the people canalizing anger because at one point in time even political party like mine when he entered government then we were not as close as before with the people of Morocco. So that's the main reason why the Arab Spring didn't have the same effect and this is how you can see all those testimonials from Clinton to the president of Tunisia to CNN and so on and I like also the special ambassador for the European integration project Mrs. Apatero also was very eloquent talking about you know stability in Morocco reforms and so on and so forth. So let me move now to the economic part. As I told you, this is really what it's a, I will call it the four leg type of project where basically you have to work on the social things, you have to work on the political aspect you have to work on the economic aspect. And if you take the economy we're saying in order to create growth then let's start with the right foundations. Foundations in the economy are really the macroeconomic drivers, macroeconomic fundamentals and you can see here that the Morocco growth, the GDP growth has been averaging 4.8% since 2001 in 2013 we will finish around 4.2% so it will decrease a little bit our average but very slow. And we have a finance law that we just have been discussed being presented today so I will have to head back tonight to Morocco to present that finance commission where they are projecting for next year 4.5% so we are in this range between 4 and 5% for the last 10 years. Inflation has really been subdued with 1.7%. I believe now it's not really strong point in the, I will call it advanced word where basically a lot has been done to fight inflation. There's another thing that is very important for us which is the FDI growth for our balance of payments, we really need to attract foreign direct investment and I know that Ireland has been doing great in this area. I believe before the crisis Ireland has been the most successful country in Europe attracting the likes of HP, Microsoft, Bombardier and so on and so forth. So at one point in time we have been a little bit competing against you guys and I was Minister of Finance, I'm Minister of Industry and in charge of foreign direct investment. I'm sure I met some investors that had the choice to go into Ireland or go into Morocco because Morocco is the next frontier. North Africa has started to be the next frontier. Eastern Europe has started to fade away because once they got into the European Union they had inflation salaries, they had mobility happening so we were really fighting hard and in fact we were competing more with Tunisia and Egypt to be honest than with Ireland but we had sometimes for example Bombardier had a manufacturing plant here and when I was discussing with them they had the choice of going into different countries extending their plant here or coming to Morocco so we won that case. We lost others but we won that case. An employment rate also has been decreasing 8.7%. So all this has made us, you know at financial times the FDI made us the African country of the future in 2012 where basically we were the first country in Africa for foreign investment and Fitch maintained its investment grade in 2012, the IMF organized our efforts and really it's hard work, really hard work to make sure that you maintain the budget deficit and the control and at the same time you create enough economic fertility to keep that GDP growth. The foundations of the house are really that macroeconomic dynamics then we said what are the growth engines basically and the growth engines we decided to be more active as government not just for example if you go and you talk with the World Bank they would tell you well just make the business climate right just have the fundamentals right and the entrepreneurs will decide where to invest basically that's the economic theory. We decided that as government to be more voluntary and to promote really the sectors where we believe Morocco has a competitive advantage so this is how for example I was in charge of the emergence pact in the industry where basically we defined what we called the Métis Monde du Demal which is the global sectors, Morocco global sectors where we can compete and we said well that's automotive, that's iron objects, that's offshoring that's a growing industry and so on and so forth and we started looking at the world as north and south mainly it's not a lot, I mean not going east to Middle East but really being you know the, I used to say that Morocco can be for Europe but Mexico is for the US basically that's the idea but also a gate for Africa and this is where I believe we can do a lot with Irish companies and I come back to that point when I'm going to talk about Africa then so we said industries is definitely a sector that we can develop Digital Morocco 2013 where you bring IT into your processes to make them more competitive but also you build companies that can go and export this is what you have done in Ireland the other sectors logistics and we are doing a lot because logistics is part of you know the competitiveness of any industry we're doing a lot also in tourism, Morocco has been we talked with Mary about China, we're also tapping into these new countries with high potential for tourism the agriculture where I know that Ireland is also very strong in agriculture here we're saying Morocco has big potential and basically like just to make you understand what we've done if you take in the industry or if we take agriculture we really thought we went through a process like as any other company would do it so in fact we brought to McKinsey and we told them well listen Morocco wants to compete in industry, which industry should we compete which country should we compete so they scanned in 70 sectors and this is how we came up with that 7 or 8 Morocco global sectors, agro-industry, textile, electronics and so on in agriculture we did the same thing so at the end we said well there must be 2 pillars for the agriculture one pillar is what we call productive or intensive agriculture where basically we find the big land owners working on you know tree production like olive oil or oranges and so on and so forth and you'll find the second pillar which is the solidarity which is the small farmers and how we can help them develop or learn more in managing the small piece of land so just to make you understand that we have always this concern about the social aspect in the picture so fishing we had this plan called Al-Youtiz where I believe Morocco can be one of the biggest there and I'm happy that we are moving positively with this agreement on fishing with Europe that would benefit first the Spanish fisheries I mean commerce trade was part of you know our idea we have now one of the biggest malls if not the biggest mall in Africa this is where Kazablanca can play the role Dubai is playing for example that's something that we are working on the housing where we believe that if you want to stabilize the country then give everyone a house so to give everyone a house I mean you don't give it but you make it affordable this is where social housing is such an important aspect in what we do is how today we have managed and really that's a very interesting experience we have managed to create what we call champions, local champions two or three companies that we do the social housing now they are doing it in Guinea, they are doing it in Senegal they are doing it in other African countries solar plan we are very big on renewables basically we said that by 2020 we should have 42% of our mixed energy mix should be renewable energy and in fact that 42% is 14% hydraulic 14% wind and 14% solar and it's around 2000 megawatts solar that will be installed by 2020 we have started last year with 150 megawatts one of the Spanish companies was part of the I mean conglomerate that won that tender and finance, Kazablanca finance city we are basically building how financial have in Kazablanca to be the gateway between what's happening in Europe and what's happening in Africa basically that's the ambition so the growth engines as I told you I mean the foundation the growth engines now the infrastructure is another aspect of the puzzle infrastructure is playing two roles one it's a sector by itself so it creates jobs I mean when you are building up in a road you are creating jobs but at the same time it's an enabler for all those strategies that I talked about because if you have a freeway that goes north to south, east to west then you can have access to different regions we have a talent pool, we have labour force more easily and then it's happening so basically the major undertaking that we have done is the Kazablanca is the 10 years mad port 10 years mad port just to give you a sense is when it will be the second part will be finished you know two to three years time it will be 8.5 million containers a year it's as big as Rotodam it will be bigger than Marseille so just for you to understand and it's thanks to 10 years mad that we won that we convinced Renault to come and build that plant in 10 years which is one of the largest plants of automotive outside France we're building crumbways, we're building TGV I'm not very convinced about the TGV thing but heck I mean sometimes there are decisions that are taken that are not discussed enough we'll see I mean I was reading yesterday in one of the newspapers that the SNCF which sells the TGV is being challenged by their TGV operations so I hope that this is not what we're going to see in one of our newspapers 10 years down the road that's a question mark let's talk a little bit about the value proposition basically this is a real picture you can see by sunny day you can see how close we are to Tarifa or to Spain so we are 14 km from Spain so I used to say we are the least expensive European country we have not acted that in the United Nations yet but that's something and it's closer the ambassador would agree with me it's closer to go to all the south of Spain from 10 years than from Madrid basically so it's an hour trip and basically you can put anything on a truck in 10 years and reach the eastern part or the northern part of France in 48 hours so if you are working in a factory then you put it on a Friday when your workforce goes for the weekend they come back on a Monday it's on the assembly lines that's really the value proposition that we are saying and of course I'm not going to talk about numbers we'll talk about them later the other thing as I told you we believe that we are in the center of the world because you have one hour from Madrid you have one hour from Paris you have three hours from Frankfurt you have seven hours from New York and so on and so forth and you are really well located the other thing is look at this sorry what happened is all these connections when we built the Tangerine's Met Board it allowed us to make so much connections with the other parts of the world because we needed a large port to do that and we were meeting with a guest with a Jesra on that port but that's the way it is and when you are looking at the ranking they have an index that is the logistics index that measures competitiveness we moved from the 83rd you know the 83rd rank in 2005 to 18th you know in 2011 which means that it has really brought us possibility to go to all those African countries for example or to European countries or to Asia thanks to Tangerine's Met and this is where I am going to come back to that point when I talked about Irish companies we believe that we can if Irish entrepreneurs are really keen on going to Africa then they can one of the best way of doing it is coming, is teaming up with Moroccan companies because of this but because of course our political position in Africa I mean King has been very active making building strong relationship with many African countries and African countries have very good opinion of us they are very friendly they don't see us at this point in time maybe that image will change at the end in a few years down the road but they don't see us as the old you know coalizing country they see us as more advanced but in some areas but you know they can build green partnerships so at this point in time Irish companies can benefit from this this is just to show you again how well connected we are today if you take the traffic of Casablanca believe it or not more than 30% of that traffic is linked to traffic connecting to Africa so which means that we are really constituting hub in Casablanca and we have more than 24 cities connected directly from Casablanca either in Africa or in the Middle East this is just to show you that we have tried to be very competitive and we continue to do that of course other countries have their own challenges I'm not going to compare the salary in Morocco to Spain because the cost of living or the standard of living is different but then the Spanish entrepreneurs have ensued that because now they are one of the best one of the most is one of the largest investor in Morocco and in fact last year this is the first year where our exchange trade with Spain has become the number one for us and for you guys I mean overtaking France France will not be happy about that so this is really what's happening in that part but then these costs allow us to compete with Turkey with Romania allow us to compete with Tunisia and Egypt although Tunisia and Egypt today have their own challenges that have nothing to do with the economy and that's why coming back to my first point political stability is the first thing that the investor will look at otherwise there is no return on investment I mean if you don't have if not sure there will be an investment after a few years so the other thing that is very interesting is the free trade agreements that we have signed we have signed more than 41 free trade agreements because when you take euro you don't count it as one I mean every parliament has to ratify it so we have 41 free trade agreements if you take that 41 free trade agreement then it's around 1.2 billion customers that you can assess from Morocco with a custom free exemption that's really what this chart is showing agreement with the United States of America agreement with Turkey we have an agreement with the European Union we have an agreement and a negotiation with the West African countries and this is why and also we have this advance started with EU because if an investor comes in a country then he needs to have access to markets at duty free that's really what we have been doing sometimes it was really tough for our industries I mean some industries in Morocco disappeared because they had competition from Spanish companies or they had competition from Turkish companies or they had competition from United Emirates you know companies but at the end of the day when I was in the ministry people would come and complain and say well that's what Schumpeter has said there will be creative destruction which means that some sectors will disappear others will be created that's really what happened so for example in ceramics where the Spanish people are very very strong we have been very suffering so there are only few players there we cannot talk about sector but in automotive we have had so much gain so that's really what's happening of course all this cannot work if you don't have the people and people we have been really focusing on building universities on encouraging private sectors we are challenged let me tell you that although we believe that we can we have the capacity today to have 10,000 engineers graduating the year at the secondary level we are challenged our level in education has really decreased over time and this is one of the most I believe we have to do only one thing in Morocco that we should you know do this because I mean any country should do this I mean focus just on education and I understand that when the crisis hit Ireland the government has decided to see focus just on education and on infrastructure which is an interesting thing to do I'm very happy today because I have my colleagues from the University of Al-Akhawain which is one of the largest private universities I mean they are still some subsidies from the government but it's it's an English speaking university and they are they came here to meet with the Trinity College and with another university here so the aim is to have more links on the education side with Ireland which I believe is going to benefit both countries our youth are very open to the world in fact more than 13 million users internet users more than 4.1 million Facebook users which is the 39th rank in the world I mean this is driving me crazy with my daughter let me tell you that and sometimes as Mary mentioned I worked for Microsoft for 11 years so we were promoting ICT and the use of IT technology, the computer as an extension of the brain just like the tractor as an extension of the human force but sometimes I'm questioning I have hard questions about the use of IT I mean if you have all these kids going and just chatting the whole day the heck maybe it's not the best use so but anyway that's a new word and we are embracing it well I'm going to finish just to tell you this is not just to let you know that once you have done all these jobs and you want the investors to come then you have to have some packages to offer them just like you guys for example you decide that the copper tax should be much shorter than the rest of Europe we have the same thing and we have free zones where basically just to give you an idea a free zone he would pay zero I mean of course if he used the free zone to export he would pay no copper tax for the first five years then they would pay 8.75% copper tax over the next 20 years so it is very unbeatable type of proposition we have fund that will help subsidize part of your investment of course up to 10% basically that's what we pay for few sectors the sectors that we want to encourage then we will have that otherwise we will not have it in tourism also we are doing things and of course for Casablanca finance city these are the free zones where basically for example in Tangier free zone a lot of your a lot of Spanish people working in that Tangier free zone this is how I learned my few words in Spanish just kidding so and finally we have also an agency just the one that you have here that have been very successful to make sure that we have someone to talk to if you want to be an investor and that I am very happy to to tell you that I was the one who created this in fact all of them no not all of them, Dubai was not created at that time but here I am looking for the United Kingdom one in London so we have a representation in London but thank you very much for your attention and I hope that you enjoyed the presentation