El FOSFATO de Marruecos (parte III)

Morocco is already testing its power. At September's World Fertilizer Conference in San Francisco, Morocco's ascendancy was the main topic of conversation. Asked about OCP, trader Mark Mangassarian answered with a question: "Oh, you mean the guys who are trying to drive up phosphate prices the most?" In contrast to commodities such as oil and corn, whose prices are set largely on futures exchanges, phosphate prices are still negotiated the old-fashioned way: in closed meetings between buyers and sellers. Many such meetings took place at the San Francisco conference. Mangassarian, who is assistant vice-president for sales at Nitron International in Stamford, Conn., spent three days hopping from suite to suite at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. Though the industry average for diammonium phosphate fertilizer (DAP) has been hovering at around $500 this summer, the poker-faced executives he sat down with weren't willing to go below $550. A few weeks later, Mangassarian came to see it their way, and is paying $560.
OCP's tough negotiating tactics have irritated many in the industry. "You try to talk to them, and they don't answer. They've always been like that. That's their strategy," says Taoufik Meddeb, who buys sulfur for Groupe Chimique Tunisien, another state-owned company and OCP's biggest competitor in North Africa. Late one afternoon at the conference, Meddeb was slumped on a couch in the hotel's lobby, recounting how much the phosphate world had changed over his 30-year career—everything, he said, except for the Moroccans' secrecy. Indeed, it seems as though everyone wanted to talk about Morocco except for the Moroccans themselves, who mostly deflected questions. "God just put the phosphate there," said Jamal Bensari, a member of OCP's delegation. "It is our only resource, and it is our responsibility."
Earlier this year, Mark Evans, editor of Fertilizer International, sent a reporter to Casablanca, but upon arrival at OCP headquarters for prearranged interviews, he says, OCP denied the reporter access and said the communications director who had dealt with Evans was no longer on staff. Zouaoui, OCP's current communications director, did not arrange interviews for Bloomberg Businessweek following multiple requests in September and October. "It is quasi-impossible right now," he explained. In a separate e-mail, he also noted that OCP is "subject to customary international governance standards for a global corporation, including transparency and accountability."
Opinions differ on the degree to which OCP is run by royal decree. Called the King of the Poor for his efforts to raise Morocco's living standards, Mohammed VI's $2 billion in assets places him seventh on Forbes' list of the richest royals, far behind Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai but well ahead of the Prince of Monaco. Although he is not technically the head of state, he has control of the country as both a secular and religious leader. He appoints the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, and has the power to overrule or dissolve the elected Parliament. His handsome portrait adorns the first page of OCP's annual reports, and his face appears in nearly every home and coffee shop. (The King also holds a controlling stake of the ONA Group, a publicly traded holding company that owns near-monopolies in Moroccan sugar and steel.) The Moroccan Embassy did not respond to requests for interviews with the King.
Although the King is liberal by the standards of Middle Eastern royalty (opponents called the rule of his father, Hassan II, the "years of lead" for its frequent killings and disappearances), he continues to be criticized for crackdowns on the press and for human rights abuses, including the fatal shooting in October of a 14-year-old Sahrawi boy at a checkpoint in Western Sahara.

fuente : http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203080895976_page_3.htm