El agua estrecha todavía más las relaciones entre Marruecos y España
This untied repayable loan, charged to the Fund for the Internationalisation of Enterprise (FIEM), will enable more than 21,000 people in the towns of Zag, located in southern Morocco, and Moulay Brahim, some 55 kilometres south of Marrakech, to have access to drinking water.
The project consists of setting up and maintaining, for five years, two reverse osmosis treatment plants, which reduces the mineral salts in the water to make it drinkable.
According to the Spanish government's communiqué, "the project is of strategic importance for Spain because it represents a new step in trade relations with Morocco, as it has agreed to finance an untied project, in response to its repeated requests in this regard, in a framework of financial collaboration dating back more than 10 years".
This credit aims to consolidate trade relations between the two countries, which began again in February 2022, following the High Level Meeting between Spain and Morocco in Rabat. At that meeting, the two countries signed a financial protocol of 800 million euros for the implementation of new projects by Spanish companies in the energy, water, transport and logistics, agri-food and innovation sectors. Morocco is Spain's main trading partner in Africa, as it is the country to which it exports the most on the continent. It is also a priority country in the Horizon Africa Strategy, which promotes the internationalisation of Spanish companies in Africa.
The water sector is key in the Alaouite kingdom due to the chronic water stress to which the country is subjected and its dependence on this precious commodity, both for the agri-food and tourism sectors and for its own survival. Water stress occurs when a region needs more water than it has. Thus, according to the World Resources Institute, Morocco will reach highly extreme water stress by 2040.
In 2022, Morocco experienced the worst drought in 40 years. The volume of water in reservoirs nationwide was the lowest ever recorded. This led the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development to take drastic measures. It imposed restrictions on irrigation for the year 2022-2023 in view of the shortage of precitations, with some 417,000 hectares of agricultural land being irrigated with water from the dams, 74% less than in the previous year. This is because the reservoirs at the end of 2022 were on average only 31% full, which is 6% less than in 2021.
Agriculture is key in Morocco as it generates 12% of GDP (World Bank, 2021) and provides one third of employment. While agri-food exports broke records in 2022, exceeding 80 billion dirhams for the first time, water is key to further increasing agricultural production.
The Moroccan government is aware of the vital importance of water in the economic sector. It has therefore launched the National Water Plan 2020-2050, with a budget of 380 billion dirhams, in which it plans to increase and improve water infrastructures, exploit water tables and build desalination plants. Thus, in 2023, the world's largest water desalination plant will be inaugurated near Agadir. This plant, which is being built by the Spanish company Abengoa, will supply the local population with drinking water and also irrigate crops.
For his part, King Mohammed VI is also committed to this issue and, in October 2022, he set out a plan before the Moroccan Parliament to improve the country's water crisis. The sovereign declared that innovation and technology in water saving, the rational exploitation of groundwater, the preservation of water tables and the end of water wastage were priorities in order to solve the country's water shortage.