Al-Futtaim Capital, an investment company based in Dubai, is to finance and develop a 40,000-home affordable housing project in Morocco.

The development, which will cover 700 hectares, is in Bouznika, about halfway between Morocco’s capital, Rabat, and its business hub, Casablanca, where hundreds of thousands of people commute daily.

'We had been looking for Morocco for over five years now,' said Marwan Shehadeh, the managing director of Al-Futtaim Capital. 'The market to target in Morocco is the mid to low-income market.'

Morocco is one of the few markets where the property industry has remained robust, largely because of steady demand for affordable housing. The Moroccan housing ministry says the country needs an extra one million homes, and each year more than 100,000 new families enter the market.

The National