Japanese Loans to Finance Moroccan Water and Road Programmes

A recent article on the USA Morocco Board highlights the impact of tourism on water resources in Morocco. As Rebecca Timson points out, water is a scarce resource in Morocco, and tourists use a lot of it when they stay in hotels and swim in pools and especially when they go golfing. A single 18-hole golf course requires 3500 m/day of water, which is 3.5 times as much as the average Moroccan consumes in a whole year.

For a long time there have also been issues of water scarcity particularly in Fez and Meknes. Now it appears that help is coming in the form of loans from the Japanese international Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The JICA just announced that it has granted Morocco two loans of 2.3 billion dirham (about 200 million euro) to finance a water supply and rural roads projects. This has been confirmed today by sources from the ministry of Economy and Finance.

The first loan of 1.7 billion dirham will finance a potable water project in Fès and Meknès in central Morocco, which have been facing water supply problems for a long time.

The second loan of 583 million dirham is meant to finance the rural road programme.

It aims at facilitating the movement of rural populations and reducing disparities between rural and urban zones.