Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, has held talks with the President of the Moroccan Senate, Mustapha Oukacha, in Morocco's capital city of Rabat.

The two sides exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation and dialogue.

Li Changchun also conveyed greetings from CPPCC Chairman Jia Qinglin and Li praised the development of Sino-Moroccan ties since the two countries established diplomatic relations fifty years ago.

Groupe ONA, a Moroccan investment fund owned by the family of King Mohammed VI, said full-year profit rose 80 percent, helped by investment income and capital gains.

Net income in 2007 advanced to 1.73 billion dirhams ($237.7 million), or 104 dirhams a share, from 959.3 million dirhams, or 59 dirhams, a year earlier, the Casablanca-based fund, which has interests in mining, financial services and retail, said in a statement published today in newspaper L'Economiste.

The Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has provided Morocco with two loans totalling 147 million euros to finance road and water supply projects.

The first loan will finance the construction of 630 km of roads under the National Rural Roads Programme, while the second is earmarked for a water supply network in the northern and central provinces of Morocco, a diplomatic source said in Rabat.

JBIC loans to Morocco in the past 10 years, under public development aid, have grown to US$2.18 billion.

Morocco has indicated enhancing the supply of rock phosphate and phosphoric acid to India to enable it meet its raw material requirement for manufacturing DAP and other complex fertilisers.

The indication came in a meeting between Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi and India's Minister of Chemicals, Fertilizers and Steel Ram Vilas Paswan at Rabat on Thursday. Paswan is leading a high-level delegation to Morocco on a three-day visit.

Morocco appears to be losing its position as the world's top cannabis grower to Afghanistan after a drive to eradicate the crop in the African country's impoverished north, the head of the U.N. anti-drugs agency said.

Morocco's multi-billion dollar cannabis harvest almost halved from 2003 to 2006 after officials ordered the destruction of crops, farmers were encouraged to seek other sources of income and drought depleted yields.

Some 70,000 hectares of the dark green, fern-like plant were grown in Morocco in 2006, said Antonia Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).