The government launches a new generation of integrated regional development programs with a financial envelope exceeding 20 billion dirhams.
Follow-Up
A briefing memo for the 2026 fiscal budget reveals the government’s plan to launch a new generation of integrated regional development programs as part of the implementation of royal directives aimed at achieving spatial and social justice and ensuring equal access for all citizens to the fruits of development and essential services.
The government has earmarked an initial budget of nearly 20 billion dirhams to support this program in 2026, prioritizing vulnerable rural areas and semi-urban regions.
This initiative responds to current developmental challenges, primarily focusing on reducing spatial disparities and enhancing the impact of public investments on job creation and improving living conditions for residents. The government’s launch of this initiative is based on royal instructions, particularly those articulated in the Throne Day speech on July 29, 2025, and the royal address opening the legislative year on October 10, 2025, where King Mohammed VI emphasized that “there is no place today or tomorrow for a Morocco that moves at two speeds.”
The document confirms that integrated regional development programs embody a practical translation of the advanced regionalization option, aiming to accelerate developmental transformations and provide precise and participatory responses to new challenges. Despite public investments climbing from 182 billion dirhams in 2020 to 340 billion dirhams in 2025, there remains a persistent need to ensure tangible impact from these investments on employment and living standards, especially in structurally deficient areas.
The program relies on four main pillars: supporting employment through enhancing economic activities and creating new job opportunities; improving basic social services in education and health; sustainable management of water resources; and territorial rehabilitation and reducing spatial disparities, with particular attention to mountainous areas, oases, and emerging centers.
The program features an integrated and participatory approach, grounded in accurate field diagnostics and flexible upward planning that facilitates the involvement of citizens and local stakeholders in designing and monitoring projects, shifting from an implementation mindset to one of integrated development, and relying on governance based on transparency and accountability, with an annual evaluation of results involving institutions like the Court of Accounts and the Ombudsman.
The priority program for 2026, which has been allocated 20 billion dirhams, aims to accelerate the implementation of projects with immediate social and territorial impact, including rehabilitation of rural schools, enhancing transportation and school meals, deploying mobile medical units, updating rural health centers, expanding water and electricity networks, breaking isolation in remote areas, and creating job opportunities through local projects and support for women’s and agricultural cooperatives.
To ensure the success of this initiative, the government has initiated executive measures, including issuing circulars for governors, preparing a methodological guide, and establishing regional and provincial steering committees, along with in-depth spatial diagnostics in preparation for the development of a needs map and project identification by region and province.
The government also plans to enhance budgetary governance by amending the organic finance law to ensure better coordination between sectoral programs and expanding the law’s scope to include public institutions, in addition to establishing an information system to measure the impact of public spending, aiming to enhance transparency and expedite the advanced regionalization project.
