Construction Week Online
by CW Staff
Royal Ranches is located in the Atlas Mountain foothills near Marrakech
Infrastructure work at Royal Ranches Marrakech (RRM), a flagship project of Bahrain based Islamic investment bank, Gulf Finance House (GFH), is now 45% complete.
Bank officials on Tuesday toured the project site, which covers 380 hectares in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains and will evenutally include a 5-star hotel, a ‘6-star boutique’ hotel, an equestrian school and an 18-hole golf course. The project draws upon Moroccan architectural styles and its luxury residential components and shopping area recall the ‘winding streets of a traditional souk’.
“We are committed to adding value to this project with profitable and timely completion of the Royal Ranches Marrakech development,” said Louis Raymond Buadrand, president STAM, main project contractor.
With the infrastructure progressing as planned, RRM is redirecting its executive towards the task of attracting investors and developers to develop the readily available parcels of land.Esam Janahi, president of RRM, said, “We are very pleased with the progress that we have seen today. We anticipate further steady progress over the coming months as we now focus on revising our time schedule for completion and restructuring the company’s board of directors.”
“Morocco has seen significant growth over the past few years in the services and tourism sectors, and the government has encouraged this with stronger Foreign Direct Investment and domestic policies and incentives all in support of open trade,” said Janahi.
Dr Ahmed Al Mutawa, vice chairman of GFH said, “Morocco has recently inked a deal with a number of GCC states to create a new Moroccan entity that will focus on the development of new tourism resorts in Morocco, which proves that this project is on the right track.”
Morocco has long standing free trade agreements with GCC countries. Morocco has also been a favoured target of the GCC for diversifying the investment of accumulated liquid oil wealth.
At the end of 2010, Morocco’s government launched Vision 2020, a 10-year tourism plan with the goal of doubling tourist arrivals by 2020. Morocco’s labour-intensive tourism industry accounted for 14% of GDP in 2010.
In the first half of 2011 tourism receipts rose by 9.3% to $2.9bn according to EIU estimates. This figure is set to grow if Morocco joins the GCC, with an expected rise in the number of Gulf tourists.
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