The Spanish government approved a loan of €5 million for Morocco to build two seawater desalination plants—in Assa-Zag in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region and in Moulay Brahim in the Marrakech-Safi region.
The Council of Ministers approved the loan, which Spain will grant to Morocco’s National Office for Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE) through the Spanish Fund for the Internationalization of Enterprises (FIEM).
The project is in line with the development of a priority sector — water — for the Spanish economy’s internalization strategy.
Morocco’s government has recognized for decades the value of treating seawater to meet needs in cities experiencing water stress or shortages. Morocco has already adopted the approach by building multiple desalination plants.
However, Morocco’s water stress is on the rise. The country acknowledged that the dam filling rate this year was only 45%, amounting to approximately 7.5 billion cubic meters.