Renault chairman and chief executive Carlos Ghosn has presented to Moroccan King Mohammed VI the French car maker’s plan on doubling its production at its Casablanca plant.
The meeting between the king and Ghosn took place in Marrakesh.
Under the plan, Renault aims to increase production to 160,000 cars annually by 2022.
The production increase at the SOMACA plant in Casablanca will help Renault manufacture 500,000 cars annually in Morocco, including 340,000 from its larger Tangier plant.
The SOMACA plant exported the first “made in Morocco” car in 2007, the same year Renault signed an agreement with the Moroccan government on the Tangier plant, which began operating in 2012.
Since then, the country’s automotive sector has witnessed an unexpected growth, to top the list of Morocco’s exports.
The government has said that it plans to increase to 1 million the number of cars made in Morocco and to boost the automotive sector’s revenue to 200 million dirhams ($30 billion) annually by 2025.
It also wants to raise the local sourcing rate to 80 percent by 2020 from an estimated 50 percent.
