UNCTAD: Morocco Chairs 12th Session of Commission on Investment, Enterprise and Development

The meeting, chaired by Morocco's Permanent Representative in Geneva, ambassador Omar Zniber, considered the report of the Multi-year Expert Meeting on Investment, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Productive Capacity-building and Sustainable Development, as well as the report of the Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting.

The Secretariat, for its part, presented the progress made in promoting and strengthening synergies among the three pillars of UNCTAD's proceedings in the Commission's areas of competence.

In its statement, the Moroccan delegation welcomed the contribution of UNCTAD's investment and enterprise program to strengthening sustainable development in developing countries, highlighting the essential role of investment in achieving the Development Goals.

In this statement, Abderrahim Ait Slimane, minister plenipotentiary at the mission of Morocco in Geneva, stressed the impact of the pandemic on the decline in the flow of foreign direct investment worldwide, noting that Morocco has been the only African country to maintain a robust level of FDI flows thanks to the diversified profile of FDI and the presence of large investors in manufacturing industries, including automotive, aerospace and textiles.

In this regard, he called for increased regional cooperation to improve the FDI framework in Africa and further encourage the flow of intra-African FDI.

In addition, he emphasized the importance of the African Free Trade Area agreement in providing an unprecedented opportunity to facilitate the costs of intra-African cross-border trade and investment.

Morocco's chairmanship of this session was highly appreciated both by the member States and by the UNCTAD leadership and Secretariat, who paid tribute to the Moroccan development policy and its strong support for all the policy agendas advocated and promoted by the UNCTAD.