Mr. Mohammed BOUSSAID, Minister of Economy and Finance and Mr. Simon Gray, Director of the Maghreb Department in the Regional Office of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa signed Monday, December 2nd, 2013, at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, two financing agreements.
The first agreement is the first Development Policy Loan for transparency and accountability (Hakama) amounting to 200 million U.S. dollars. The loan granted by the World Bank aims to support the implementation of major new rights and governance principles of the Constitution, to strengthen transparency, accountability as well as increase citizen engagement and access to information .
The program Hakama is structured around the following two areas:
• Increasing transparency and accountability in the management of public resources, in particular through strengthening performance budgeting, a more consistent implementation of public procurement procedures, and improving the governance and financial control of businesses and public institutions (EEP).
• Promoting inclusive governance through a proactive policy of key financial information disclosure by setting a legal framework for general access to public information and the citizens' right to participate in decision making. The second financing agreement is about the gift from the MENA Transition Fund for the financing of Local Government Support Program (LGSP) for an amount of U.S. $ 4,550,000 (37 million dirhams).
The objective of this project is to develop a sustainable program giving access to Local Authorities targeted to decentralized support units and assistance to the institutionalization of inter-municipal cooperation.
The program is primarily planned around the following two components:
• Component 1: Human Resources and Assistance to the Owner centers devolved to Local Authorities:
This component will be in charge of designing and managing a support mechanism, through a single window, which will provide technical assistance to Local Authorities during the projects' preparation and management.
• Component 2: Inter-municipal Cooperation and Institutional Reform for the provision of local public services:
This component will include specific advice services and incentive mechanisms to accelerate the creation of Inter-municipal Cooperation structures as well as the creation of public Heritage Companies, as drivers, in targeted areas which the inter-municipal cooperation structures would establish to plan and finance their infrastructure investments.