Vice President Hamid Ansari visited Morocco and Tunisia

• Vice President Hamid Ansari concluded his five-day visit to the North-African countries of Morocco and Tunisia
• It was a maiden visit by an Indian Vice-President in 50 years to the two nations.
• This meeting was mainly focuses on the issues of terrorism, UN Security Council expansion, investments in private sector and to strengthen Africa and regional matters.

Highlights:
Morocco:

• To further develop and diversify profile of bilateral economic cooperation and explore new avenues of co-operation and partnership on a wide range of issues of shared common interest.
• India signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with Morocco for improving bilateral relations in different areas including cultural exchange, water and information technology.
• Morocco’s supported India’s candidature to expend it in United Nations.
• India shall be setting up a Centre of Excellence on Information Technology in Morocco. The centre shall be setup by C-DAT, which will take special care of linking Information Technology industry straight to the industry.

Tunisia

• India has very cordial bilateral relations with Tunisia. The economic cooperation between the two countries is deepening with Indian investments in phosphate sector.
• Tunisia is looking to broaden its trade and investment partners away from crisis-ridden Europe to include Asian and Gulf countries. So, India is the obvious choice.
• The jihadists’ threat emanating from around could destabilize the region; hence border control, intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism can be important elements of Indo-Tunisian defence relations.

Analysis

• Both Morocco and Tunisia were important for India given that India imports a large amount of phosphates from these two nations. With food security a key item on the agenda of the Indian government, the importance of these two countries cannot be over stated. Phosphatic fertilisers are critical for Indian agriculture sector.
• India is one of the major markets for Moroccan phosphate and its derivatives. An India-Morocco fertiliser joint venture in Morocco, called IMACID, was set up in November 1999. At present, it is producing around 430,000 million tonnes of phosphoric acid per annum, nearly all of which is imported by India.
• Other main items of export to India are metallic ores and metal scrap and inorganic chemicals. India’s exports to Morocco are cotton yarn, synthetic fibre, transport equipment, pharmaceuticals, agricultural implements, chemicals, spices and manufactured metals. However, the India-Morocco two-way trade, which was once worth almost $2 billion dollars, dropped to a little over $1 billion in 2015-16.
• Indian business presence in Morocco includes a Tata Motors plant in Casablanca which manufactures bus bodies. Ranbaxy too has a presence in Casablanca with a manufacturing plant for production of medicines.
• In Tunisia, Indian business presence includes Gujarat Fertilizer and Coromandal Fertilizers which have a joint venture.
• Indian automobile sector is also looking at Tunisia which is seen as a “very prospective market”.

By: Vishal