Activities in Morocco

1. Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC; Governor: Kyosuke Shinozawa) will sign today (16:30 hours JST) an ODA loan agreement totaling 12,764 million yen for the Mediterranean Road Construction Project in the Kingdom of Morocco at its head office in Tokyo.
2. The proceeds of the loan will be used to finance civil works, consulting services and other services to upgrade and increase the width of a 100-km segment of the exiting 133-km road as well as construct a 20-kilometer new road to improve curvatures and reduce curves in the current route that connects Tetouan and Jebha. This is one of the eight sections of "the Mediterranean Road Construction Plan" that aims to construct and improve a 550-km road along the Mediterranean coast in the northern part of the country.
3. Road transportation plays an important role in Morocco where some 70% of cargo shipments and the majority of passenger transportation rely on roads. Thus automobile ownership doubled in the 1990s. The proportion of paved roads on the national and state routes, the country's major arteries, was about 80% in 2000, which was attributable to the government's vigorous effort to upgrade the nation's roads since independence. In contrast, roads and farm lanes in rural areas remain in a sorry state. If road closures due to seasonal factors such as heavy rain and snowfall are taken into account, villages with no access to roads account for 50% of the total. In particular, the difficult terrain that characterizes the region along the Mediterranean coast in the northern part of Morocco, which is sandwiched between jagged shorelines and steep mountains, has hindered the development of the transportation network and is also responsible for considerable delays in social and economic development.
   It was against this background that the Moroccan parliament approved "the Economic and Social Development Plan (2000-2004)" in August 2000 which placed priority on "reducing regional disparities by rural development." Providing better access to social services, in particular, for rural populations as well as rural development and reduction in regional disparities are urgent challenges for the government.
4. The project will not just improve the road conditions between Tetouan and Jebha. Combined with the work on other sections of the road that is simultaneously underway with financing from domestic and other overseas sources, it will help build a major artery that traverses the northern part of Morocco. This will serve to invigorate the local economy, reduce regional disparities between urban and rural areas and improve living conditions for people in the region by providing greater access to social services.

While JBIC conducted an appraisal in December 2000 for this project, it was not subject to the Ex-Ante Project Evaluation Report. (Ex-Ante Project Evaluation Reports on projects for which appraisals were conducted after April 1, 2001 are made available to the public.)

(See Appendix for details)