Evaluation of Trade Potentiel among Morocco and Senegal using an Advanced Gravity Model

In this paper, we are interested in the trade potential between Morocco and Senegal. To do this, in the first part, we analyzed the structure of foreign trade in both countries and the nature of their bilateral trade. It appears that, like most African countries, Morocco's and Senegal’s trade flows are largely done with their Western partners. Senegal remains the main partner of Morocco in West Africa with a very small share in its total trade (less than 5% of Moroccan flows are heading to Africa).In the second part, and to estimate the potential of trade, the use of a gravity model based on panel data seems to be the most appropriate approach. We selected a random effects model using generalized least squares. This model focuses on a sample of 25 countries (16 African and 9 non-African countries), which is spread over the period 2001-2013. The estimation was carried out to assess the trade potential with Senegal and the rest of the sample countriesThe results of this work show that Morocco's commercial potential to Senegal as in a number of African countries is very low or nonexistent. For the rest of the countries and in this case the traditional partners (Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands), Morocco has a strong commercial potential. The same result was reached in trade with Algeria and Egypt with a commercial potential that exceeds 4 times the observed exports.