|
Morocco, March 1, 2007 -
IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, is working with partners to help Morocco establish a national code for corporate governance. Following regional workshops on corporate governance code development, Morocco has launched a national task force. The country’s corporate governance commission includes private and public sector leaders and plans to develop a code over the next nine months with technical support from IFC, the Global Corporate Governance Forum, and the OECD. The workshops were jointly organized by the Forum, a multi-donor IFC Global facility and IFC PEP-MENA, IFC’s advisory facility for the Middle East and North Africa.
Morocco’s corporate governance commission held its first meeting on February 6, 2007. This private-public commission comprises by key Moroccan actors in corporate governance, including the General Confederation of Moroccan Companies CGEM), the Center of Young Leaders, Bank-Al-Maghrib, the Association of Moroccan Banks, the Moroccan Securities Commission, the Stock Exchange of Casablanca, the National Agency for SMEs, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Economy. The Ministry of Economy and CGEM will coordinate and manage the commission, which is co-chaired by Rachid Talibi Alami, Minister of Economy, and Mohamed Chaibi, Vice President of CGEM. For maximum efficiency, the commission will regularly consult with accounting experts, lawyers, professional organizations, institutional investors, government agencies, higher-level academic institutions, and the media.
Morocco has numerous legal documents that relate to the economic and financial environment and its actors, including the corporative law, the laws of the Stock Exchange and of the CDVMMoroccan Securities Commission, the commercial code, and the new bank law. Most of these are explicitly or implicitly connected to corporate governance. But the country’s corporate governance is not in accordance with global standards and does not include the participation of all interested parties (such as corporations, banks, employees, investors, and the media). Hence the development of a national corporate governance code of good practice will complement existing Moroccan laws and regulations.
The national code will help promote market confidence and transparency, define companies’ responsibilities, boost inflows of domestic and foreign investment, encourage the private-public dialogue, combat corruption, limit the informal sector, and develop efficient private sector.
IFC-PEP MENA and the Global Corporate Governance Forum will be holding a further workshop for the region’s countries, entitled Developing Corporate Governance Codes, on June 7-8, 2007. This final workshop of the series will be held in Casablanca and focus on implementing, monitoring, and reviewing corporate governance codes. For more information please contact: Sebastian Molineus at
Smolineus@ifc.org
or Marie-Laurence Guy at
Mguy@ifc.org
.
About IFC
IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, promotes open and competitive markets in developing countries. IFC supports sustainable private sector companies and other partners in generating productive jobs and delivering basic services, so that people have opportunities to escape poverty and improve their lives. Through FY06, IFC Financial Products has committed more than $56 billion in funding for private sector investments and mobilized an additional $25 billion in syndications for 3,531 companies in 140 developing countries. IFC Advisory Services and donor partners have provided more than $1 billion in program support to build small enterprises, to accelerate private participation in infrastructure, to improve the business enabling environment, to increase access to finance, and to strengthen environmental and social sustainability. For more information, please visit
www.ifc.org
.
About the Global Corporate Governance Forum
Established in 1999, the Global Corporate Governance Forum is an IFC multidonor trust fund facility with its secretariat housed in the IFC/World Bank Corporate Governance Department. The forum aims to promote the private sector as an engine of growth, reduce the vulnerability of developing and transition economies to financial crises, and provide incentives to corporations to invest and perform efficiently in a socially responsible manner. The forum sponsors regional and local initiatives that address the corporate governance weaknesses of middle- and low-income countries in the context of broader national or regional economic reform programs.
|
