UNDP Poverty Report 2000

Regional Targeting for Poverty Reduction

The poverty reduction programme in Morocco is promoting economic growth, developing human capital and providing a social safety net. Formulated in 1993 as part of the country's social development strategy, it became the National Programme for Sustainable Human Development and Poverty Alleviation in 1996, implemented as a series of sub - programmes and projects, several of them large, multifaceted regional activities. One is the five-year Social Priorities Programme, which was launched in 1996 with a budget of $266 million - three-fifths from the World Bank. This programme is being implemented in 14 of the poorest provinces and consists of projects ranging from basic schooling and literacy to health care to a series of employment-creating labour-intensive projects.

Another large integrated programme is the National Programme on Sustainable Human Development and Poverty Eradication in Rural Areas, financed by UNDP and implemented by the Planning Ministry. Operational in four provinces and targeting 40 of the poorest rural communities, the programme supports the development of animal husbandry and agriculture, dairy and cheese cooperatives, microcredit institutions - and such environmental protection projects as those for soil and water conservation.

A third large integrated programme targets the development of the northern provinces. Its objective is to develop the Mediterranean part of Morocco - a relatively isolated region with a fifth of the country's people - by supporting environmental conservation projects, developing agricultural and industrial enterprises and providing infrastructure, health care and education.

The government is enlisting the private sector in poverty reduction efforts. The Banque marocaine du commerce exterieur has joined with the Ministry of National Education and UNDP in a three-year programme to promote schooling and community development in some of the most disadvantaged rural areas. The bank will supply $2 million to construct rural community schools, while UNDP will provide technical assistance to encourage better community governance - the first public-private partnership of its kind in Morocco.

The government has also adopted microcredit programmes for poverty reduction. It passed a law in 1999 to strengthen the legal and regulatory framework for microfinance, and it will create a national microfinance federation with support from UNDP's MicroStart programme. MicroStart is to develop the capacity of local microfinance institutions so that they can sustainably provide microentrepreneurs with access to finance, technical training and institutional support. MicroStart's revolving fund supports five national microfinance institutions. Having benefited 12,000 clients, it plans to provide services to a total of 30,000 clients by 2001.

Methods for Regional Targeting

Several of the regional poverty programmes use sophisticated methods to identify the provinces and communities to target. The National Programme on Sustainable Human Development and Poverty Eradication in Rural Areas selected the four poorest provinces by ranking all provinces according to 31 socio-economic indi-cators. These included demographic indicators (such as population density), infrastructure measures (such as length of roads) and indicators of access to social services (such as school attendance and access to drinking water). Then the programme used 11 indicators to select the 10 poorest rural communities within each province. These included such indicators as illiteracy, school enrolment for girls, the unemployment rate and the percentage of the population with access to electricity.

Such mapping helped identify not only the areas most in need of assis-tance but also the types of assistance they needed. Based on the results, 12 communities were given priority for gaining access to roads and electricity, and another 18 were given priority for obtaining access to drinking water. Priority for receiving a health clinic was given to seven com-munities for which the nearest clinic was six kilometres or more away.

The programme for the development of the Northern Provinces is based on the active participation of members of civil society and local authorities. Community-based and civil society organizations participate in identifying, implementing and monitoring and evaluating projects. Consensual systems of monitoring, evaluation and programme revision are also being established at the provincial and communal level. These mechanisms enable both local authorities and citizens to exercise some control over the activities.

The national poverty programme also has weaknesses. The coordination of the programme is complex and unruly, especially since the sub-programmes and projects are financed and executed by different sets of partners. For example, the Social Priorities Programme is coordinated by the government, the World Bank, UNDP and local communities.

Linking Poverty to the Growth Strategy

Additional problems include the lack of resources and the difficulties in tar-geting benefits. Dwindling resources impair the action plans of L'Entraide nationale, which provides assistance to orphans, the aged and the handicapped. And food and nutrition programmes generally benefit urban households even though they are supposed to target agricultural workers and landless labourers in rural areas.

Another weakness of the national poverty programme is its separation from the country's strategy for economic growth. The government puts strong emphasis on economic growth as the main engine for poverty reduction. To spur growth, it has introduced several monetary, fiscal and exchange rate reforms that liberalize the economy further and orient it more towards global markets. It has adopted measures in agriculture - where 70% of the poor work - that encourage the development of private enterprise in the context of decreasing protectionism and a pro-gressive shift towards export markets. But too little thought has gone into developing policies that stimulate pro-poor growth and are coordinated with the government's national anti-poverty efforts.

Such policies are especially important because Morocco's human development is low relative to its income. In 1999 it ranked 99th of 174 countries in GDP per person but 126th on the human development index. And while 13% of its people are income-poor, 39% are affected by human poverty. The links between economic growth, distribution and human development need to be more carefully analysed, with pro-poor policies formulated accordingly.