April 2000	Update: Morocco

With the exception of a number of new city pages, private initiatives continued to more noticeable than publicly sponsored sites. The SEPTI listed 651 national sites at the end of March, a twelve percent increase over the end of last year.

The number of sites concerning the national ministries includes new sites for the State Secretaries.

The small decline in the number of reported hospital and museum sites is largely due to a new classification scheme of the Marweb directory. The site has apparently abandoned self-registration for a user preference scheme in which site visitors "vote" for their favourite sites. As a result the directory has revised its referencing of a number of sites.

Two recent initiatives should contribute significantly to the growth of Moroccan sites in the immediate future:

1. The inauguration on February 1rst of Planetarabia.com specialised in the development of local portal web sites : the Moroccan portal web site will aim at developing a web site dedicated to the Arab community in the world. Planetarabia is a subsidiary of an American company.
2. The inauguration of the Moroccan office of the French company Wanadoo specialised in the development of local portal web sites. To develop a portal web site for local contents and provide a low cost Internet connection to facilitate the growth of information technology in Morocco.