Technical Assistance to the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) for the preparation of an Implementation Plan of the MWRI Institutional Reform Vision/Strategy

Description

The MWRI IR Vision/Strategy has been guided by eight principles:

• Participation: increased responsibility and authority of users
• Decentralization: delegation of MWRI operational responsibilities to horizontally integrated local MWRI administrations
• Basin organization: adoption of hydrological unit boundaries for management and administrative units wherever feasible.
• Water quality: pollution control and prevention as an integrated dimension of water management.
• Private sector participation: increasing the demand for private sector investment and services and facilitating their supply.
• Privatization: divestiture, where feasible, of nonessential MWRI assets and activities.
• Cost recovery: transfer of financial responsibility to users along with management responsibility, recovery of selected main system O&M costs, and partial recovery of selected local I&D improvement costs.
• Interministerial coordination: establishment of National Water Council to ensure policy and program coordination, strengthen
• laws, and improve enforcement. 

The eight strategies are applied, in different degrees and combinations, to Egypt’s three main water management contexts:  the old lands of the Nile Valley and Delta, the groundwater-based areas of Egypt’s deserts, and the “new lands” developments of Toshka and North Sinai. 

Challenges facing the water sector in Egypt are enormous and require mobilizing and managing all resources in an integrated manner. Coping with current reform strategies, MWRI (Ministry for Water Resources and Irrigation) has established an Institutional Reform Unit (IRU) in 2002 to coordinate, monitor and support MWRI’s institutional reform efforts on basis of a participatory approach with consultation from various stakeholders within and outside the MWRI. The IRU has prepared a comprehensive Vision and Strategy for MWRI Institutional Reform. The IRU reform vision draws its principle from well established world standards for reform. The formulation of the strategic plans follows a broader perspective with a participatory approach entailing a drive for change from within the ministry itself and involving distribution of responsibility and authority among stakeholders. NSCE in turn joined forces with EcoConServ to support the implementation of the agreed Vision/Strategy by preparing an implementation plan.

Services

• Prepare overall vision implementation plan 2017 (assessing the implications of the strategy/program areas on the different sectors of the MWRI)
• Prepare supplemental studies (literature review, review of secondary data, and in-depth interviews with samples from stakeholders related to each study subject)
• Prepare detailed rolling vision implementation plan 2007-2012 (At this stage an institutional design needs assessment will be conducted to provide inputs for finalizing the 8 strategies milestones and formulating detailed tasks lists)
• Assist MWRI in Vision Implementation Planning Process 2007-2012
• Backstopping, Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality Control.