The automotive sector in Morocco. Local manifestation of a global dynamic or decisive industrial emergence?[Le secteur automobile au Maroc. Manifestation locale d'une dynamique mondiale ou émergence industrielle décisive ?]

In the Fordist version of industrial capitalism, automobile production forms the basis of industrial production and the wage relationship, in other words, of economic development and the transformation of modes of work. Derivatives of this centrality continue to fuel the post-Fordist debate on economic development as to the ability of the automobile industry and its national development to stimulate, in the current configuration of Global Value Chains (GVCs), the industrialization of developing economies. The literature continues to emphasize the key driver role of the automotive industry in job creation, productivity improvement, innovation and structural transformation of economic activity. Empirically, however, the debate is far from settled. The difficulty of moving from a successful entry into automotive GVCs, dominated by a small group of global automakers and suppliers, to the effective development of an automotive industry central to national economic development remains high. To be lifted, it requires public policies adjusted to the markets and to the need for accumulation of technological assets that contrast with a simple strategy of attracting and securing FDI. This is the crucial phase that Morocco seems to be entering. The sectoral analysis in this chapter seeks to understand the origins and nature of the industrial discontinuity represented by the rapid emergence of motor vehicle manufacturing and then discuss its actual and potential impact on the country's economic development. The proposed answers will take into account both external conditions, i.e. the profound transformations of the automotive sector in general, and internal conditions, which remain decisive in organizing the productive, social and territorial integration of an originally exogenous productive transformation. The central hypothesis of the discussion logically poses the problem of complementarity and synchrony between external and internal conditions. By moving away from the neo-institutionalist normativism that inexorably prescribes the conformation of the economies of the South to the presupposed rules of a global market for products, it in fact raises a more complex dimension of economic success: the role of national public policy in meeting the challenge of synchronization favourable to development. A first point (1) recalls the stages in the trajectory of the Moroccan automotive sector and the transformation of the institutional arrangements that accompanied it. The analysis of the sector's key statistics (2) then allows us to put into perspective the current weight of automobile production in the industrialization - or deindustrialization - process, while highlighting the present potential. Point (3) focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the export positioning of the Moroccan automotive industry and on the challenge of local integration. Finally, the concluding point (4) summarizes the prospects and challenges for the development of the automotive sector in Morocco.