The hydraulic situation in the Souss-Massa-Drâa region, the accounting and financial audit of the ABH for the 2013 financial year, the accounting review of the summary statements for the years 2008 to 2012, as well as the agency's achievements at the end of 2013 were at the centre of a presentation by the director of the ABH, during the agency's board of directors meeting held on July 21st. Charafat El Yedri Afilal, Minister Delegate in charge of Water, stressed the importance of the water sector, the strategic place it occupies, and the leading role it plays in establishing social peace, tranquillity, and stability, as well as in the fight against poverty and precariousness, thus qualifying it as a lever for economic development and a catalyst for social and human development. She recalled the scale of Morocco's experience in managing water resources, inspired by a relevant and forward-looking water policy and based on integrated management and the construction of dams, which she described as optimal and exhaustive, having contributed to mitigating the impact of drought. She thus recalled that in accordance with the requirements of regionalisation, making administrative decentralisation and/or deconcentration a strategic choice, the Water Law 10/95 implies the use of a participatory planning methodology. This is done through the implementation of the necessary tools for the management of water resources, with a view to ensuring, within a participatory framework involving other actors, an optimal, sustainable, and integrated management of these resources. The supervisory ministry, she added, attaches great importance to the institutional situation of the hydraulic basin agencies and considers them to be a lever for local development. She therefore considers the support of these agencies and their endowment with material means and human resources as an unwavering choice, in order to enable them to evolve as they should and, consequently, to accompany the realisation of the land and proactive political project which is none other than the project of advanced regionalisation, which leads to the amplification of the prerogatives of territorial directorates and representative institutions. The minister mentioned, at the end of this meeting, that her department is in the process of developing the said national water plan, which should constitute a reference framework for the national water policy, just as it should constrain and integrate the programmes of all stakeholders in the sector. It should, in this case, allow for the convergence of development plans. She stressed, in this regard, that the agency is concerned with the implementation of the axes and contents of this plan, those which concern, obviously, the Souss-Massa-Drâa hydraulic basin, without forgetting to recall the deficiency from which the region suffers in terms of water resources, calling on all stakeholders to opt for the search for the most adequate solutions to meet this challenge. The Wali of the region recalled, for his part, the measures that have been taken for the preservation of water resources, framed by the framework convention aimed at the preservation and development of these resources. This convention is structured around the creation of the water police, the use of awareness-raising, the promotion of studies and scientific research, the control of these resources, and the construction of dams.