The actors of the Fez-Meknes Region agree on their violins in order to deploy the orientations of advanced regionalization on the ground, in accordance with the ambitions of the New Development Model (NMD). As part of the preparation of the PDR 2022-2027, the region intends to schedule a series of meetings to discuss the needs of the population.
The Fez-Meknes Region hosted, on Tuesday, April 5, the second stage of the series of round tables on The Challenges of the Regions, initiated by the Horizon Press group on the theme “Advanced regionalization and New development model: the Challenges of Fez- Meknes for a new regional development policy”. Divided into two parts, the first panel of this round table was devoted to the governance and management model, as well as to the major development projects in progress.
Indeed, the regional bodies are invested with a major role in the establishment of clear governance and strategic tools and programs (PDR, SRAT, PAC, etc.) as well as through the activation of transfer mechanisms of state powers to the regions.
Highlighting the considerable scope of the regional development program (PDR), the president of the Fez-Meknes Region, Abdelouahed El Ansari, recalled that the PDR made it possible to identify 97 projects with a total investment of 11.2 billion of DH (MMDH).
In this regard, he indicated that the projects of the State-Region program contract are experiencing a slight delay in implementation that the council intends to make up for. This discrepancy is due either to a lack of funding or to a lack of commitment from certain partners.
“To ensure the progress of these projects, our board is working hard to complete all the projects of the program contract before the end of 2022”, specifies El Ansari. And to add, “the Regional Council of Fez-Meknes is in the process of preparing its PDR 2022-2027. In this context, and in accordance with the recommendations of the NMD, a series of provincial meetings are scheduled to discuss the needs of the population of the entire territory of the region”.
For his part, Mohamed Benmoussa, member of the CSMD, specified during this meeting that the territory must preside over its destiny. “Today, we are convinced that territorial development programs must emanate from the field, with the participation of all local actors and reflect, in all cases, the needs of the populations. This approach will contribute to preventing the constraints linked to the implementation of the various regional programmes”.
According to him, “the territory must be master of its destiny”. This analysis partly explains why the development projects, initiated within the framework of the PDR of the Fez-Meknes Region, are at relatively low levels of achievement. Indeed, they were first thought out at the central level and then rolled out within the regions. They were not designed with the citizens and the economic actors of the territory.
Benmoussa recommends that, to guarantee the declination of the NMD at the regional level, the status of the territorial public service should be revised by allowing the walis, as well as the presidents of the regions and municipalities, to be equipped with the capacity to recruit , in particular on the basis of contracts, and to benefit from the transfer of the “best” civil servants from the central administration to the territories.
He also specified that it is necessary to think of bringing engineering into the management of the territories, in particular of the municipalities and the regions, and in particular via financial engineering capable of mobilizing the full fiscal potential of the territories, which is far to be the case now.
“Local authorities must be managed according to Best Practices, like large private groups. Otherwise, they will not be able to resort to financial savings,” said Benmoussa.
Concerning the priorities to be defined and the assets to be highlighted, Benmoussa indicated to the operators of the region that “where it is absolutely necessary to put the package in the development strategy of the Fez-Meknes Region, it is obviously in the tourism, crafts, agro-industry and textiles, and in general, in everything related to engineering, innovation, research and development and offshoring of high expertise”.
With regard to the important role that the Moroccan university is called upon to play within the framework of the NMD, Radouane Mrabet, president of the University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah (USMBA) specified that “our university is ready to mobilize the all of its vital forces to design and contribute to the elaboration of regional development documents and instruments.
Indeed, it is in pole position to quickly reach the cruising speed necessary to achieve the objectives of the NMD”. The university will also be placed at the heart of the territorial ecosystem so as to develop a new approach to higher education, focused on research, and closely linked to its socio-economic environment.
Indeed, the region has a large pool of students that it must maintain and train to enable it to contribute to its growth. The ambition of the NMD is to make higher education and scientific research a real lever for development, by quickly resolving its main shortcomings and dysfunctions. In the medium and long term, the ambition is to position Morocco as a regional, even international hub for higher education and scientific research.
Mehdi Idrissi / ECO Inspirations
