Market brief
Morocco
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Morocco, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for MoroccoMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Morocco: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.
Political stability
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Percentile among all countries; higher is more stable.
Investment climate
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Regulatory quality for private investment; higher is better.
Financing & PPP
- PPP frameworkActive (desalination & irrigation PPPs)
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 2.7 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersWorld Bank, AfDB
- Climate adaptation planAdopted (2023)
Opportunities
- Large seawater desalination (Casablanca, Agadir, Dakhla)
- Solar-powered desalination for agriculture
- Drip-irrigation conversion at scale
- Wastewater reuse for cities & golf/tourism
Key challenges
- Multi-year drought & falling dam levels
- High agricultural water use (citrus, cereals)
- Groundwater over-abstraction
- Uneven north–south distribution
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT / national reports (latest available); World Bank 2023–24. Figures approximate. Governance indicators: World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (2024).
Contracting authorities
The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Morocco. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- Ministry of Equipment & WaterMinistry
- ONEE – Water BranchUtility
- Régies & delegated operators (Casablanca, Rabat…)Utility
- Hydraulic Basin Agencies (ABH, ×10)Basin & resources authority
- Regional Agricultural Development Offices (ORMVA)Irrigation & drainage
How deals are structured
The framework in Morocco is Active (desalination & irrigation PPPs), the schemes we track carry US$ 2.7 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are World Bank, AfDB, AFD, EIB.
Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.
The projects register bears this out. Of the 23 tracked schemes in Morocco, 4 name a concession structure in the finance note; the rest record only where the money came from, which is not the same as saying they were not concessions.
How to bid
Morocco publishes its procurement rules in full, and three articles of the 2023 decree decide most bids. A bidder not established in Morocco has its financial offer adjusted by 15% against the reference price in favour of bidders that are established there, and the penalty must be stated in the tender regulations; the test is establishment, not nationality, so registering locally removes it.1
| Procuring body | ONEE’s water branch for bulk supply and desalination, procured as a partnership; state and local works otherwise under the public procurement decree.21 |
|---|---|
| National preference | Article 147: a 15% adjustment of the financial offer against bidders not established in Morocco, subject to ratified international commitments.1 |
| Industrial offset | Article 146 permits a compensation requirement: direct investment, technology or skills transfer, training, local products, industrial integration, maintenance and after-sales, with no payment made for it.1 |
| Unsolicited proposals | Article 13: anyone may propose a project the buyer had not identified. The buyer evaluates, then tenders a dossier built on it, and the originator bids with a bonus of 5% to 10% of the overall score.1 |
| Currency | A bidder not installed in Morocco may price in a convertible currency, converted at the central bank rate of the first working day of the week before opening.1 |
| Challenge | Article 163: complaint to the contracting authority, which may suspend the procedure. Article 164: direct recourse to the national public procurement commission, which extends the standstill by 15 days where the complainant’s own offer was rejected.1 |
| Counterparty change | The delegated distributors have been replaced by regional multi-service companies under Law 83-21: Casablanca-Settat from late September 2024, and Rabat and Tangier during 2025. A distribution, metering or loss-reduction contract now has a new counterparty.4 |
The reference transactions are Casablanca, awarded on 17 November 2023 to Acciona with Afriquia Gaz and Green of Africa on a thirty-year design-finance-build-operate basis, three years of construction and twenty-seven of operation, for 548,000 cubic metres a day extensible to 822,000;2 and the Agadir expansion, a concession won by Cox on 29 July 2025 adding 125,000 cubic metres a day for a planned €250 million, with more than 150 MW of wind following in 2027.3 What could not be established: payment security, dispute forum and foreign ownership limits.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water Law 36-15 | In force | 2016 | Basin management, licensing, reuse and desalination framework. |
| PNAEPI 2020–2027 | Active | 2020 | National emergency programme: dams, desal, transfers, reuse. |
| Aquifer contracts (contrats de nappe) | Expanding | — | Negotiated abstraction limits basin by basin. |
| PPP law (amended) | In force | 2020 | Framework for desalination and irrigation PPPs. |
| Law 83-21 on regional multiservice companies | In force | 2023 | Regional companies replace the delegated operators: Casablanca-Settat from late September 2024, Rabat and Tangier during 2025. |
Primary references: the Ministry of Equipment & Water and the river-basin agencies (ABH).
Projects
Tracked schemes in Morocco, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
23 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.
Track record
What has actually been signed in Morocco, from the awards log and the major projects register.
Disclosed value by year
US$ bn of tracked awards in Morocco carrying a published value
6 further awards in this sector carry no published value and are not in the chart.
| Year | Project | Winning firms | US$ m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Casablanca SWRO | Acciona, Afriquia Gaz, Green of Africa | n/a |
| 2022 | Dakhla Wind-Powered Desalination | Nareva, ENGIE | 260 |
| 2022 on line | Sebou–Bouregreg Water Highway | SGTM | 600 |
| 2019 on line | Laâyoune Desalination | Not identified in the sources consulted | 45 |
| 2017 on line | Agadir Desalination & Irrigation | Abengoa | 346 |
| 2015 on line | Tanger Boukhalef Wastewater Plant | Not identified in the sources consulted | n/a |
| 2011 on line | Marrakech Wastewater Plant | Waterleau | n/a |
| 2010 on line | Fès Wastewater Plant | Golden State (China), Waterleau (Belgium), Sotradema (Morocco), Eusebios (Portugal) and Mesquita | n/a |
| 2004 on line | El Guerdane Irrigation Concession | Amensouss, the concession company led by Omnium Nord-Africain with Fond Igrane and Infrastructure Development and Management | n/a |
| 2002 on line | Agadir M'zar Wastewater Plant | BIO-UV Group supplied the ultraviolet disinfection stage | n/a |
Years without a label are award years from the curated log; rows marked on line are dated by commissioning, from the projects register. 10 rows in total for Morocco.
Repeat winners
- Not identified in the sources consulted2 tracked awards
Firms or consortia appearing on two or more tracked awards in Morocco.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Morocco, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.
Pipeline & awards
Tenders
Prices
What households pay
| Household tariff (US$/m³) | Cost of supply (US$/m³) | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.24 – 1.10 | $2.34 | 2014 | Arrêté 2682.14 of 21 July 2014, BO 6275 bis; in force 1 August 2014 |
The ONEE schedule runs MAD 2.37/m³ for the first 6 m³ a month to MAD 11.03 above 35 m³, excluding tax, with a fixed charge of MAD 6 a month. Above 12 m³ ONEE bills selectively: the rate of the block reached applies to the whole month's consumption, so the marginal price is far higher than the blocks suggest. Households in the large cities are billed by their regional multi-service company instead.
Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.
Watch list
What has actually moved in Morocco, dated, from the monthly briefings. Each item names the edition it came from.
- 2025-05Casablanca financing signed on 8 May, MAD 6.5 billion, Acciona with Green of Africa and AfriquiaGaz.August 2026 briefing
The full editions are in the briefing archive.
Sources
9 references
Project, pipeline and tender records are compiled from procurer announcements, lender disclosures and trade reporting; each project page carries its own source and the date it was last checked. Institutions are from the decision-maker directory. Economic and water indicators are cited on the reference profile.
- Décret n° 2-22-431 of 8 March 2023 on public procurement (Morocco), Bulletin Officiel 7184 of 6 April 2023.
- Le360, award of the Casablanca desalination contract, 17 November 2023.
- Cox, concession for 125,000 m³/day at the Agadir plant, 29 July 2025.
- Société régionale multiservices, summary of the regional multi-service companies created under Law 83-21. A tertiary source, used only for the transfer dates.
- FAO, AQUASTAT — Global Information System on Water and Agriculture: country water resources, withdrawals by sector and dam register. fao.org/aquastat. Latest country values as compiled at build.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators and country water-sector reporting. data.worldbank.org.
- Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank), 2024 update — political-stability and regulatory-quality scores, 0–100, shown in the market snapshot. worldbank.org/wgi.
- World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Atlas (2023) — the sub-basin risk, stress and groundwater-decline layers on the interactive maps. wri.org/aqueduct.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.