The Trackfin initiative, organized by the World Health Organization, aims to enhance financial tracking in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector in Morocco, addressing the lack of consolidated financial data for effective policy-making. The initiative involves a comprehensive study on expenditure across various WASH stakeholders and has been structured to answer critical questions regarding funding sources, expenditure distribution, and sanitation coverage. The results showcase a significant increase in WASH expenditure from 2009 to 2011, emphasizing the importance of private and public sector contributions to improve service delivery.

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UN-Water/TrackFin Initiative WHO WASH Accounts in MOROCCO:
Overview and next steps
1 Introduction
The TrackFin Initiative organized by the World Health Organization in the context of GLAAS aims to define and test a methodology to track all expenditure to the WASH sector in four volunteer countries, including Morocco. The goal is to strengthen national systems for the collection and analysis of financial information, and to provide policy-makers with key programming elements in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.
This initiative is based on the observation that financial information on the WASH sector at country level is either unavailable or insufficiently consolidated. As a result, there isn’t a sufficiently solid basis of evidence to define sectoral policies and optimize the allocation of financial resources. It also makes it hard to conduct country-by-country comparisons.
Morocco’s exemplary involvement in GLAAS was an important factor to select it as one of the pilot countries for the TrackFin Initiative. The organization of the TrackFin Initiative pilot exercise was entrusted to the International Institute for Water and Sanitation (IEA), a WHO Collaborating Centre, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.
The aim of the study is to track WASH expenditure from all stakeholders including government bodies, local authorities, public- and private-sector institutions, NGOs, national and international donors, investors and households, and thereby to provide answers to the following four key questions:
 What is the total amount of expenditure in the sector?
 How are the funds distributed between the different services and different types of expenditure (investment, maintenance, operating costs)?
 Who pays for drinking water and sanitation and how is the financial burden distributed among the different sources of funding?
 Which entities are the principal channels for financing the sector and in what proportion do they contribute to total expenditure?
The data are analysed and presented in the form of tables and standard indicators to facilitate comparison between countries and over time.
2 Overview of the WASH sector in Morocco
2.1 Organization of the WASH sector
The Communal Charter (Law 78-00 of 2003 amending Royal Decree no. 1 76- 583 of 30 September 1976) devolves responsibility for the establishment and administration of communal public services, inter alia in the sector(s) of the supply and distribution of drinking water, the supply of electricity, and sanitation, to the Communal Council, (…). The Communal Council shall determine the mode of administration of communal public services, whether by a State-owned company, an autonomous corporation, a concession or any other form of delegated administration of public services.
Institutionally, three types of institution are involved in the water and sanitation sector: (i) operators responsible for providing WASH services, (ii) ministerial departments in a support role, and (iii) steering bodies.

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a. Operators responsible for providing WASH services
Operators responsible for providing WASH services at the national level in Morocco include public operators (the National Office for Electricity and Water (ONEE), Régies autonomes de distribution (Directly managed municipal distribution service operators), and communes), private-sector operators (Sociétés concessionaires), and some users’ associations. Households occasionally are self-supplied.
- The National Office for Electricity and Water: This public body is responsible for planning water supply at national level. It is also responsible for the supply of drinking water and sewerage in towns and communes, which is delegated to the communes;
- Régies autonomes de distribution: These are local public-sector bodies responsible for the supply of drinking water, electricity and sanitation in large cities, acting on behalf of communes;
- The private sector, through Concessionaires operators. These private companies under Moroccan law are responsible for the supply of water, sanitation and electricity.
- Urban and rural communes that provide these services using their own resources;
- Users’ associations which often provide a drinking water supply in rural areas;
- Households that self-supply, especially in rural areas.
b. Ministerial departments and public-sector bodies
Ministerial departments are responsible for sectoral planning and coordination. They include:
- The Sub-ministry for Water, which formulates and supervises national policy on the mobilization, management, conservation and protection of water resources;
- The Sub-ministry for the Environment, which is responsible for preparing and implementing national policy on the environment and sustainable development;
- The Ministry of the Interior which operates:
o Through the Water and Sanitation Department, which oversees the local authorities responsible for the provision of water and sanitation services in their respective territorial jurisdictions. The Department provides technical assistance to communes and coordinates the supply of drinking water and the wastewater network;
o Through the Office for Licensed Corporations and Services, the supervisory authority for distribution corporations and delegated entities which is tasked, among other things, with preparing and implementing national policy on water supply and the regulation, monitoring and oversight of services managed by corporations or services administered under delegated management contracts;
- The Ministry of the Economy and Finances, which plays an important role in national water policy through its public expenditure control function and its oversight of public bodies involved in the sector;
- The Ministry of Health, which is responsible for health aspects such as monitoring the quality of drinking water and the release of waste water into the environment;
- The Ministry of General Affairs and Governance, which chairs the inter-ministerial committee on prices and is involved in regulating tariffs for sanitation and drinking water at the production and distribution stages;
- River basin agencies, which evaluate, plan, manage, protect and monitor water resources within their respective territorial jurisdictions. They can provide financial and technical assistance, and operate under the supervision of the Sub-ministry for Water.
c. Steering bodies
The main steering body for the sector is the Higher Council for Water and Climate, whose task is to draw up general guidelines for national policy on water and climate.

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2.2 Situation of the WASH sector and levels of service coverage
a. Water supply
The efforts made by Morocco in recent decades have resulted in a current national drinking-water production capacity of 1.1 billion m3/year, compared with 80 million in 1972. Thus, access to drinking water in urban areas has become the norm since 2005. In 2013, 94% of the urban population had individual connections; the remainder got their supply from public taps.
In rural areas, following the introduction of consolidated drinking water supply programmes, efforts have resulted in an increased rate of access to drinking water from 14% in 1994 to 93% at the end of 2012. The table below cites some indicators for the development of water supply in Morocco:
1995
2005
2009
2010
2011
2012
Production capacity (m3/s)
40
44.6
50.9
51.6
52.4
54.6
Urban supply (%)
96%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
Individual connection
81%
91%
93%
94%
94%
94%
Public tap
19%
9%
7%
6%
6%
6%
Rural supply (%)
14%
70%
89%
91%
92%
93%
Table 1 : Water supply sectoral indicators (Source ONEE-Water Division)
b. Liquid sanitation
In urban areas, 80% of the population has access to sewerage services. The National Sanitation Plan (PNA) has accelerated progress in sanitation service provision and this resulted in a total connection rate to sewers estimated at 72% in 2012. There were 75 wastewater treatment plants in operation at that date. The recycling of treated wastewater through organized and controlled re-use is not well developed, barring a few experiments currently being evaluated, given the existence of various regulatory, institutional and financial obstacles.
Sanitation coverage in rural areas remains low and is characterized by standalone systems, specifically cesspits and septic tanks. In recognition of this problem, the Moroccan authorities are planning to implement a National Liquid Sanitation Programme in Rural Areas (PNAR), modelled on a similar programme in urban settings. A study is due to be completed in late 2014. The main objective of this programme is to achieve a connection rate of 50% of rural households by 2035 and provide appropriate facilities for nearly 3 million people through:
 Construction of 226 public sewerage systems;
 Construction of 372 000 individual sanitation systems;
 Support and advice for required capacity-building, awareness-raising campaigns and monitoring of programme implementation.
3 The TrackFin exercise in Morocco
3.1 Roll-out of the exercise
The activities of the Morocco exercise were conducted by IEA, as the WHO collaborating centre supervising the study, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. An inception workshop was held in Rabat on 11 and 12 March 2014 and brought together a high-level panel representing key decision-makers and institutional stakeholders. This resulted in the establishment of a national steering committee and a technical monitoring committee representing the key institutions involved.

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The exercise covered the period 2009-2011. The Moroccan committee developed six specific questionnaires tailored to the different target groups to collect the data.
3.2 Inventory of WASH sector financial flows
The table below summarizes the financial flows that were included in and excluded from the study, and indicates the reliability of the data (actual or estimated).
Table 3 : Availability of data on financial flows
The data on expenditure by the main operators in the WASH sector (ONEE, public bodies, concessionaires operators, the ministries of health, water and the interior and the High Commissioner for Planning (HCP)) were analysed as a whole in order to produce tables and WASH indicators. However, certain categories of data could not be collected, particularly from communes, associations and self-supplied households. Estimates were therefore made using the approach described below.
a. Communes
Expenditure by communes was estimated on the basis of budget allocations received from the Ministry of the Interior. In the future, this estimate could be refined by using a survey of a small sample of communes for which data are available, extrapolated to all communes throughout Morocco.
Source of funding
Availability of data
Comments
Tariffs for services provided
Data on tariffs are normally available from service providers, but to a lesser extent in the case of operators such as associations, communes, etc.
Fees charged to water suppliers by river basin agencies (for collection and pollution) are identified in the financial reports of the river basin agencies, but are not itemized in suppliers’ balance sheets.
Households’ expenditure for self-supply
The estimates come from household surveys collecting information on their average expenditure.
Domestic public transfers (Central)
It was possible to gather data on actual expenditure, but in some cases public institutions were unable to provide the actual amount spent, only the budgeted amount.
Domestic public transfers (local authorities)
Public transfers from decentralized institutions (local authorities) are often difficult to obtain. These were estimated on the basis of budget allocations from the Ministry of the Interior.
International public transfers (grants from public-sector or multilateral donors)
Data on public international transfers are available at government level, but are insufficiently disaggregated by subsector (water/sanitation, urban/rural, etc.)
Voluntary contributions (NGOs)
No data have been provided by NGOs despite numerous requests. NGO expenditure in this sector is considered to be negligible in Morocco.
Repayable financing
(loans)
The data comes from various sources (Ministry of Finance, service providers, lenders and donors), but needs to be consolidated. The data does not distinguish between commercial and soft loans.
Data available
Partially available data + estimate estimates
Estimate
Data unavailable

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b. Water users’ associations
In this exercise, data could not be obtained for this category of operators. However, for future exercises, we suggest an approach based on the following protocol:
 Inventory of WASH sector associations to identify the number of households (clients of the associations) and determine the average expenditure of households served by these associations;
 Statistics on water sales from ONEE (the main provider of water to associations), HCP, recent surveys (household living standards, etc.) could be used to estimate expenditures in this category. It should be noted that the ONEE-Water Division provides training for associations that includes an accounting and financial management component.
c. Self-supplied households
Data on spending by self-supplied households could not be collected and therefore had to be estimated. The estimate was based on the assumptions outlined below. It should immediately be noted that a methodology to estimate this spending needs to be agreed upon in order to gain a fuller understanding of spending in this category, especially drawing a distinction between operating expenses and capital expenditures.
 Drinking water: In urban areas, the entire population has access to drinking water and self-supply is almost non-existent. In rural areas, the self-supplied population is defined as that which lacks a source of drinking water within 500 meters, as expressed by the notion of rate of access. The consultant estimated the annualized expenditure for combined investment and operating costs at DH 600/household in the absence of reliable data on these expenses. This estimate will need be refined in future years.
 Liquid sanitation: In urban areas, the connection rate was estimated to be 72% at the end of 2012 (Ministry of the Interior, PNA report). With regard to self-supply, only 21% of the remaining population incurred expenditure for the operation of their sanitation facilities. In rural areas, sanitation has not kept pace with developments in towns, as shown by the HCP national survey of household living standards in 2007 (few efforts were made between 2009 and 2011). This survey estimates the rate of connection to a liquid sanitation network at 17% in 2007 (taking into account network users and households equipped with a septic tank). For the study, the same figure will be used for 2009-2011 in the absence of documented liquid sanitation infrastructure projects in rural areas. According to the HCP survey, only 9% of the rural population incurs expenditure for the operation of sanitation infrastructure. The estimated expenditure of self-supplied households is based on the survey cited above (DH 921/year/household for 20.6% of the self-supplied urban population and DH 1336/year/household for 8.6 % of the self-supplied rural population).
4 Presentation and analysis of the results
4.1 Total expenditure in the WASH sector
The following table summarizes the principal results of the Morocco exercise:

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Unit
2009
2010
2011
Total expenditure on WASH
Million DHS
15,819
17,848
17,948
Million US$
1,963
2,120
2,219
Total expenditure on WASH per capita
Million DHS
502
560
557
Million US$
62
66
69
Total expenditure on WASH as a % of GDP
2.2%
2.3%
2.3%
Total health expenditure on WASH as a % of GDP
5.7%
5.9%
6.3%
Total public expenditure on water as a % of total public expenditure
2.6%
2.5%
2.5%
Total public expenditure on sanitation as a % of total public expenditure
1.2%
1.6%
1.6%
Total public expenditure on WASH as a % of total public expenditure
3.9%
4.2%
4.2%
Table 4 : Wash-Account expenditure indicators
The graph below (Figure 1) shows that expenditure on the WASH sector has increased from 15.8 billion dirhams (US$ 1.9 billion)1 in 2009 to 17.9 billion dirhams (US$ 2.2 billion) in 2011, i.e. by 13%. It should be recalled that these are nominal expenses; the exercise did not take inflation into account.
The analysis also shows that mobilization of funds has increased markedly and the proportion of loans in the mix of funding sources has increased over the years.
The proportion of the contribution of self-supplied households was estimated at around 4% of total funding. This is small due to the high rate of served water supply (92% in 2011) and the low level of household investment in sanitation.
Figure 1 : Expenditure by source of financing
1 Exchange rate (Source: World Bank): 1 US $ = 8.0571Dh (2009); 8.41716 Dh (2010) ; 8.08987 Dh (2011)

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4.2 WASH expenditure by subsector
The graph (Figure 2) shows that over 61 % of these costs (investment and operation) were intended to increase access to safe drinking water in the period 2009-2011, compared with 38% on average for access to sanitation.
Figure 2 : Expenditure by type of service
The expenditure is mostly in urban areas (88%) with about 53% of these expenses for drinking water and 35% for sewerage. It should be noted that the expenditure incurred by operators in supplying drinking water to urban areas, and especially investment in the production of drinking water, also benefits rural areas through regional supply systems that serve rural centres and douars (rural villages). The low level of spending on rural sanitation should also be flagged. The national rural sanitation plan, which is currently being prepared, predicts strong growth in these investments in the coming years.
4.3 WASH expenditure by type of service provider
The graph below (Figure 3) shows that 94% of spending in the WASH sector is made by service providers, both public and private. It thus appears that the WASH sector, particularly the drinking water sector, has reached a stage of advanced maturity, and is becoming increasingly independent from the state budget. Spending on sanitation is increasing as a result of investments under the PNA.

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Figure 3 : Expenditure by type of service provider
4.4 Financing of WASH services: Where does service provider funding come from?
Given the importance of corporate service providers in the process of financing, we have zoomed in on the breakdown on the source of funding for this category; the results are shown in the graph below (Figure 5). The analysis reveals that about 62% of funding is mobilized by operators from sales of water and sanitation services (tariffs). Loans constitute 21% of the sources of financing for operator activities in the WASH sector. Government grants through development programmes such as the PNA and consolidated drinking water supply programmes accounts for 11% of all operators financing in the WASH sector.
Analysing this graph, it appears that tariffs are the main financial source for all operators. Moreover , it appears that ONEE, as the principal operator, can raise significant funds (especially in the form of loans) from donors; these funds accounted for 15% on average of all financing by supply companies and 30% on average of ONEE’s own funds in the period 2009-2011.
Figure 4 : Origin of provider financing

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5 Lessons learnt
The approach taken in Morocco was very positive from the outset. It has required a strong level of commitment by the various stakeholders.
 This pilot exercise has demonstrated the importance and value of collecting and analysing financial data by national authorities.
 The establishment of a high-level steering committee was a crucial catalyst for achieving the objectives. This is a strong guarantee of sustainability for future exercises.
 A training workshop should be organized for process owners (members of the monitoring committee) to familiarize them with the methodology.
 Greater involvement by or support from donors in the process is recommended. In this context, a TrackFin presentation was made to cluster donors on 27 June 2014.
The required data are generally available.
 The reference years chosen (2009-2011) created some difficulties due to archiving practices in certain institutions. It will be easier, and more relevant, to study more recent years in the next exercise.
 Generally speaking, operators have information systems that are capable of generating the required financial information. Given that these operators channel nearly 90% of all financial flows in the sector, this in itself is a major asset for conducting future exercises. However, the data from communes, service management associations and self-supplied households should be tracked more effectively. Specific surveys could be undertaken to achieve these objectives. The future design of HCP household surveys could integrate this component in consultation with the sectoral stakeholders.
 Spending in the area of hygiene has not been sufficiently incorporated, due to the lack of a common definition on hygiene-related activities in the WASH field.
 The process of compiling integrated national accounts is still at an early stage. In fact, this process is not a priority for the stakeholders involved. Nevertheless, the information that has been shared and structured in the context of this exercise will certainly help to raise the profile of the stakeholders.
Tools for data collection have been developed and could be automated.
 The decision to use questionnaires, proposed by IEA, was highly significant. For the next exercise, to the idea of using electronic forms to streamline the process should be further explored.
 The development of an integrated tool for collecting and processing information, thereby enabling historical data to be preserved, will be studied for the next exercise. This will guarantee the sustainability of the process in the years to come.
 The current exercise has revealed the existence of different types of WASH service providers (for example, land developers and real estate investors). The revised methodology should take this into account

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6 Recommendations for future exercises
The main challenge now is to ensure that WASH Accounts are sustainable in the long term and are constantly improved, in order to serve common goals both nationally and internationally. The main recommendations from the Morocco exercise can be summarized as follows:
 Regarding the methodology, all stakeholders must agree on the need for a progressive and concerted approach. This should be reflected in the future operational plan of the TrackFin Initiative;
 In terms of replicating the exercise and data collection:
o The exercise should be preceded by a training workshop (separate from the inception workshop) to share the methodology and adapt it to the local context. The implementation of the initiative in volunteer countries could rely on relay structures (such as IEA in the case of Morocco).
o A national system to manage WASH sector information that incorporates WASH Accounts could be envisaged, where appropriate. IEA could launch an initiative to outline the basic components of such a system, drawing on international experience.
o Thought should be given to defining an action plan for coverage, in terms of data, of areas not covered or partially covered (hygiene, communes, self-supplied households, associations, etc.). Ways to obtain more accurate data estimates could also be included in a possible brainstorming session with IEA.
o It is important to involve the stakeholders identified in previous exercises, first of all to ensure the completeness of the data, and secondly to maximize opportunities to obtain support for the initiative (donors).