A couple of months ago only 1,000 from a total of around 120,000 French words were registered. At the moment 23,000 .MA second level domains exist; almost 2% of them are registered through Ste DotMaroc.MA SARL.
.MA has interesting markets: primarily Morocco itself of course.
Internationally for companies targeting or planning to target
Morocco:
France: the second language of Morocco is French, and in Business and in universities only French is used. France is Morocco’s largest business partner.
After France, Spain is Morocco’s second largest business partner. In North Morocco, Spanish is spoken more frequently than French.
United States of America: Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize the USA. The two countries have a good understanding between them. There is also a free trade agreement between the US and Morocco.
Other interesting uses of .MA:
The state of Massachusetts in the USA, uses MA as an abbreviation.
In Japan the phonetically spoken MA means ‘universe’, ‘without
boundaries’ etc..
And finally, other countries trading with Morocco:
Export countries: France 21.4%, Spain 20.5%, United Kingdom
4.9%, Italie 6.3%, Germany 5.9%, India 5%, USA 5% (2006)
Import countries: France 17.4%, Spain 13.4%, Saoedi-Arabië 6.9%,
China 6.8%, Italië 6.3%, Germany 5.9% (2006)
Some background information about Morocco’s future economics:
While Europe is happy with a yearly economic growth of 1 or 2% the
Moroccan economy grew 7% every year for the past 5 years.
This makes it one of the top ten emerging markets in the world, after countries like China, India, Turkey, Mexico and Brasil.
In 2010 Morocco will become a part of the internal European market and there will freedom of trade and an end to import/export taxes. The economic growth will therefore have the potential to be even greater.
From North Morocco goods can be delivered within 24 hours overland, to any European country. Because of this, many companies have begun to base their manufacturing plants in North Morocco. An example of this is Nissan/Renault.
Because Morocco’s second language is French, with Spanish also spoken, many call centres such as Telefonica, French Telecom and other internet companies are operating in Morocco.
The minimal wage in Morocco at present is 200 EURO per month. This compares favourably with new East European countries like Poland, where the minimum wage has reached 600 EURO per month. The expectation, therefore, is that more multinational companies will
move their production plants to Morocco. Other companies manufacturing in China will consider relocating to Morocco, to take advantage of lower wage costs and speed of delivery. From China, delivery by sea can take between 3 and 4 weeks.
Another important issue to note is the involvement of the rich Arabic oil producing countries. They are anticipating the end of oil production. Along with this they enjoy visiting Morocco because of the liberal and modest Islam culture, with no repression, which exists there. Over the last ten years they have invested hundreds of billions in Morocco, anticipating good profit in the future, without risking their investment, as with their current investments in USD.
As you can see, we did a great deal of background research before deciding to become investors ourselves in Morocco, and begin to fulfil our objectives. It took us 9 months the reach the first mile-stone of becoming a registrar. This way we can enable an international "land-rush" on .Ma domains, without concern about the legal ownership. Until recently, .MA domain names could only be purchased through non-regulated (illegal) methods. This meant that the purchaser was unaware who the legal owner of the domain was and if the seller was authorized to sell the domain. These domains sometimes changed hands for a great deal of money, with the purchaser having no protection from fraud.
We considered purchasing all Moroccan companies who have conducted
business in this way, in order to "legalize" the domains for
their international customers. Unfortunately we found much legal liability in their legacy.
So current .Ma owners should go to
www.nic.ma and check if they are the domainholder (Titulair). If so, those domains can be transferred. This process will need some paper work for signatures. If they have purchased domains through a company like Hoost Communications (internic.ma) then they may try to request them to change
the domainholder, but we have heard several times that they do not reply to emails. Those domains will be collected and then we are going to sue the Moroccan party that has sold the domains to Hoost Communications and that way "recover" the domains for the rightful owner.
With the above in mind we think that at this moment there is no more
interesting cc/TLD with many exciting investment opportunities.
