Aged 48, Abderrahim Naji runs a small factory producing molded plastic products especially for the automotive industry, which employs forty people including many of his fellow citizens.

Originally from Beni Mellal, Naji has been living since 1990 in Italy, where he found employment in the same factory in Padua (north), of which he became the boss a few years later.

"I realized a turnover of € 6.6 million last year and thank God this figure could reach 10 million euros this year," he told to MAP news agency, while sharing his hope of forming up a factory in Morocco. "

"Moroccan youth are talented. Just give them a chance and trust them to see the concrete results of their work," said Naji who according to organizers "best embodies the spirit of MoneyGram "in this edition.

At the podium, Naji was accompanied by the winners of the five award categories namely "profit growth", "jobs", "Innovation", "Young Business" and "Corporate Social Responsibility".

The awards were presented at an official ceremony in the presence of the jury composed of eminent personalities from the economic, financial and academic Italian spheres.

Through the granting of these awards, the aim of MoneyGram International, is "to promote excellence of thousands of companies run by foreign entrepreneurs and reward those who have demonstrated to possess leadership skills and successfully adapt their vision and working method to the Italian reality. "

According to statistics, 249,464 companies with foreign bosses were active at the end of 2011, 41,223 had Moroccan bosses, overwhelmingly male (90 pc of cases).

Moroccan entrepreneurship in Italy is a recent phenomenon mainly concentrated in certain areas of the peninsula and in some production sectors. Thus, on the same date (2011), Moroccans own 5000 companies in Piedmont, 4000 in Lombardy, 3000 in Emilia Romagna , 2000 in Calabria, Tuscany and Veneto, nearly 2000 in Lazio and 1000 in Sicily and Campania .