King Mohammed chairs meeting on integrated development of Saharan provinces
Morocco, Politics, 12/5/2001

Morocco's King Mohammed VI chaired Tuesday at the Royal Office in Rabat a work session devoted to the elaboration of an integrated development plan for the Saharan provinces.

The plan was announced by the king in the speech he delivered last November 6 on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the Green March.

During the meeting, King Mohammed VI stressed the need to devise the plan in a larger framework, that of the decentralization and regionalization policy, which has been adopted by Morocco for several years and which is called to be reinforced and deepened.

The king renewed the paramount importance granted to the harmonious development of each region in the Moroccan southern provinces taking into account their potentials and their constraints.

After thorough debate of the plan, King Mohammed VI issued instructions for the elaboration of programs within an enlarged consultation between territorial authorities, elected representatives, economic operators and associations as well as with all the living forces of the different regions concerned in the frame of national days to be held next March.

The king stressed the need to give absolute priority, part of this program, to employment and investments.

He laid a special emphasis on the basic role that economic sectors especially those of fisheries, mining resources, trade, handicraft, tourism and livestock breeding, have to play in economic development and in the field of employment.

The king called for reflection on the consecration of the mechanisms and structures of the decentralized management of regional development.

The possibility to create an agency for the development of the Saharan Regions should be studied.

The integrated Plan for the Development of the Sahara regions will cover the Boujdour-Laayoune-Sakiat Al Hamra region, the Dakhla-Ousserd-Oued Eddahab region and The Guelmim-Smara region.

The program should define the operations and legal, financial and administrative provisions that will accompany, ease and adjust economic action.

The king renewed his will to see personally to the follow-up of the elaboration of the Integrated Development Plan for the Saharan Regions.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, Interior minister, Driss Jettou, advisor to the king, Abdelaziz Meziane Belfkih, director of the Royal Office, Mohamed Rochdi Chraibi, economy, finance, tourism and privatization minister, Fathallah Oualalou, and other cabinet members.

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  King Mohammed meets outgoing UN representative for the Sahara   (12/1/2001)
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