A partnership agreement was signed on July 16, 2021 between the Ministry of Tourism, Handicrafts, Air Transport and Social Economy, the Wilaya of the Souss Massa Region, the Souss Massa Regional Council and the Société Marocaine d'Ingénierie Touristique (SMIT), for the financing and implementation of a project to develop and equip the Aghroud tourist zone with infrastructure, as part of a working visit to Agadir by Nadia Fettah Alaoui, Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts, Air Transport and the Social Economy, and Imad Barrakad, Managing Director of SMIT.
Within the framework of advanced regionalization, this agreement comes with an innovative approach to strategic partnership with the Regions by pooling efforts for the development of tourism, which has been defined as a shared competence by organic law n°111-14 relating to the Regions. This partnership is based, on the one hand, on shared financing between the SMIT (a State tool for the development of tourism investment) and the Region (a territorial development tool) and, on the other hand, on the delegation by the SMIT of the task of developing and equipping the Aghroud zone to a local entity in the form of a regional development company.
During the government visit presided over by the Head of Government in 2018, the Wali of the Souss Massa Region announced the Aghroud zone project as a structuring project in the tourism development plan for the Agadir destination. Since this announcement, and in its role as a catalyst for tourism investment, SMIT has taken the initiative to prepare for the launch of this project. In collaboration with the Wilaya, the Direction des Domaines and the Departments of the Interior and Tourism, a great deal of work has gone into clearing up the land situation. In close collaboration with local partners (Wilaya, Region, Agence Urbaine, etc.) and central partners (Departments of Tourism and Town and Country Planning), SMIT has launched a study in 2019 to draw up a master plan for the Aghroud tourist zone. Also, as part of its engineering mission, SMIT carried out the financial structuring of the project and led the negotiations to raise funding from partners in a very difficult context of budget restrictions caused by the health crisis.
The aim of the project, which is the subject of the partnership, is to finance and build the facilities and equipment needed to develop tourism at the Aghroud site, on a 594-hectare plot of land belonging to SMIT, with a view to accelerating the creation of the infrastructure needed to provide future private investors with plots of land equipped with incentives to develop tourist accommodation and entertainment units.
This project responds to Agadir's need for tourism growth by providing it with a new land base for private tourism development, thus ensuring a stronger tourism economy in line with the Royal Orientations to make the Souss Massa Region an economic hub in the center of Morocco exploiting its resources and wealth.
A total public investment of 1.5 billion dirhams will be mobilized by the project partners, SMIT and the Region. Execution of the project will be entrusted to a new local structure to be created by the partners in the form of a dedicated Regional Development Company designated SDR "Aghroud Aménagement", to which SMIT will delegate the task of developing the site. This SDR will initially have a share capital of 10 MDH to be held by the partners.
In addition to the Aghroud site development component, the project will involve upgrading and enhancing the two villages located on the Aghroud site, as well as building high-potential entertainment facilities to enhance the tourist appeal of the Aghroud site (Corniche, theme parks, entertainment facilities, etc.).
The pace of investment in the destination is slowing down (ranked 4th in terms of tourist investment, behind Marrakech, Casablanca and Tangiers), a situation which is likely to worsen in the context of the health crisis. This major investment project, in the Aghroud area, comes at just the right time to restore confidence in the tourism sector and help revive the investment dynamic. The project will have a major impact on the region's development, generating significant investment (over 5 billion dirhams in private investment), creating hotel capacity of over 10,000 beds, consolidating the tourism offering and creating some 6,000 new direct jobs.
