This operation provides a $70m loan fora project that would help participating farmers in the OumEr Rbia basin increase the productivity of their farming andto promote more sustainable use of irrigation water toovercome current and future water deficits. This would beachieved by providing participating farmers with the levelof irrigation service necessary for high efficiency dripirrigation. Scarcity and degradation of water resources havereached alarming levels in Morocco. In addition, waterresources are unevenly distributed throughout the countryand rainfall is highly variable. Droughts are common. Ninetypercent of economically accessible surface resources arealready controlled by dams, leaving few options foradditional surface water storage. Population and economicgrowth have increased demand even as supply has fallen. Theproblems are particularly acute in the Oum Er Rbia basin.However, on average over the past decade, the basin'sLarge Scale Irrigation (LSI) schemes received only 60percent of the water for which the system was designed.Government of Morocco has been pursuing reforms to improvewater management and service delivery. The water allocationsystem is the responsibility of the River Basin Agencies,which were created to promote integrated and participatorywater resource management. This note is based on the ProjectAppraisal Document (PAD). The project was declared effectiveonly in September 2010 so it is too early for anyimplementation lessons to be collected.
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