MOROCCO MAKING RAPID PROGRESS IN ALL SECTIONS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 10

MOROCCO MAKING RAPID PROGRESS IN ALL SECTIONS

London Feb. 8. The annual report of the British Merchants’ Morocco Association, which Was issued only a few days after the presentation of the African Society's gold medal to Marshal Lyautey, points out that there are still merchants and manufacturers in Great Britain and elsewhere about, who labour under the misapprehension that Casablanca is an open roadstead, as it was until a few years ago, and refuse to consign goods there. As a matter of fact, says the report, it is now a large land-locked harbour, growing at a greater rate than any in North Africa in tonnage erf goods handled, amounting in 1920 to nearly 2,250,000 tons of goods. The Casablanca-Marakcsh railway is mow completed; the railways to Fez and Tangier are working smoothly; and tho Fcz-Ujda line in eastern Morocco is under construction. | The mining industry continues to develop in importance, and phosphates alone export well over 1,000,000 tons annually (this year's figures should be at least 1,250,000 tons). Morocco, like other countries, has had h good harvest, except in the south The European colonists, who now farm such a lot of western Morocco, are also introducing many new crops, such as Cotton, sugar, and even bananas. Now that tho Riff trouble has twi permanently disposed of, agriculture and colonisation arc rapidly develop-

ing in the smaller Spanish zone which is being opened up to-day by motor roads, as the French zone has already been. A remarkable feature is tho growth of the new port on Alhuccmas Bay on the Mediterranean, in the midI die of the Riff. This is now called Villa Sanjurju. Farther cast tho new and first bridge over the estuary of the Moulouya River, to be completed in 1929, will place Spanish Morocco in direct communication with Oran in western Algeria, and autobus services will then be operated between Melilla and Oran. Tho growth of the use of automobiles in Morocco is ono of tho most marked features of the modern life of the country. About onc-llfth of the car* imported arc American and the remainder mainly French.