Boeing, Safran SA, Others Building High-Tech Factories, Offering Jobs

The aviation industry is playing a role in lifting the economy of Morocco by building advanced manufacturing facilities there and offering local workers good-paying jobs.

Over the past ten years, companies like Boeing and Safran SA have built high-tech factories in the Kingdom. They have been joined in the past couple of years by United Technologies and Bombardier, which the Wall Street Journal reports have invested over $200 million in new factories in the country.

The Boeing facility grew out of a small plant established in 1999 which originally employed low-skilled workers to bundle cables for use in its 737 aircraft. Boeing officials said the plant achieved an efficiency rating of 70 percent of industry norms in just two years.

A government and an industry group have opened the Moroccan Aerospace Institute (IMA), which trains workers for jobs in the factories. Morccan workers employed by the aerospace industry reportedly earn about $320 per month, which is about 15 percent above the average national wage.

FMI: www.moroccanamericantrade.com/morogov.cfm