”Our history in Morocco, where we have been active since 2015, is long-term. We firmly believe in long-term investment, and Morocco offers us everything an investor needs to develop over the long term and contribute to the development of the country,” assures Mr. Gillion, in an interview with MAP.
What attracted the group to Morocco was first of all its “great stability at all levels”, explains the former president of the Construction Confederation in Brussels.
”Thanks to HM King Mohammed VI, who succeeded in carrying the country and giving impetus to this stability which puts the country on the path to progress, Morocco is today a country which attracts investments”, he underlines, considering that this factor is all the more important in sectors, like his, where investment takes place over the long term.
And he added that what also convinces the investor is administrative simplicity. ”We need to establish clear, readable and quick to implement rules. The procedures in European countries are too complex. The complication and administrative burdens can scare away investors”, explains the founding president of the Macan group, which is active in construction and real estate investment.
For this descendant of a large family of “builders” in Belgium, the Gillion company, founded in 1919, “the investor is particularly attentive to administrative, legal, financial and political stability, to institutional structuring, to the State’s respect for its commitments, to the business climate, to the viability and legal sustainability of their projects, but also to this positive connection, these human values and this confidence in the country of investment”.
Mr. Gillion, who joined the family business in 1993, before creating his own group in 2013, chose Morocco to be the core of his internationalization strategy. He says he landed in Morocco with “expertise and experience of more than a century accumulated by the Gillion company, which has to its credit titanic projects and participated in the evolution of Belgium between the two wars and then after the Second World War, but by bringing an approach centered on the human and his local, natural, urban, cultural and societal environment.”
In Morocco, the Macan group first set its sights on the city of Marrakech, where it has an active investment of 600 million DH. As it was successful, the company “is analyzing city by city, with a view to launching new investments and being able to bring our experiences from abroad to Morocco and also those acquired within Morocco itself”, it projects. It is indeed planning an investment of 1.5 billion DH over five years. In addition to Marrakech, Macan is exploring the cities of Rabat, Taghazout, Kenitra and Dakhla.
“The speed of procedures in Morocco allows us to launch a project, while analyzing what we could correct along the way, save time and money, reduce corporate overheads, and engage in another project,” explains the group’s president, who also advises foreign companies wishing to invest in Morocco.
The group, which revised upwards the scale of its investments during the Covid19 pandemic, despite the “global context of uncertainty”, is banking, among other things, on “sustainability”, notes its president, emphasizing the “colossal efforts” made in Morocco on the environmental level.
For the future of the sector in Morocco, it would be necessary, believes Mr. Gillion, who also chairs the Brabant Association of General Contractors in Belgium, to “continue this momentum of infrastructure projects, while avoiding real estate bubbles, ensuring a gentle mix between development and costs.”
“Within our group, we are aware of the assets and opportunities that Morocco offers and the bright prospects for its development, and we intend to stay there for a very long time,” he concludes.
The Belgian group is composed of several companies, organized under the holding company ”Macan.group”. These are Macan Development in Belgium and Morocco (development of properties for sale), Macan Properties (custodianship of properties for rent), Sotheby’s Real Estate Morocco and Belgium (consultancy and real estate agent) and Castell Management (Property Management of properties for third parties).
2024-08-25 12:01:31