The House of Representatives adopts two bills on public-private partnerships and the simplification of administrative procedures
The House of Representatives unanimously adopted, on Tuesday, January 14th, in plenary session, Bill 46.18, which amends and supplements law 86.12, relating to public-private partnership contract and Bill 55.19 related to simplifying procedures and administrative procedures. The session was chaired by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mr. Habib al-Maliki, in the presence of the Minister of Economy, Finance and Administration Reform, Mr. Mohamed Benchaaboun, and Mr. Noureddine Boutayeb the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior.
The bill aims, in line with the high royal directives, to uphold an openness in the area of management with local and international economic partners. In addition to raising the profitability, quality and effectiveness of public investment in a consistent approach that meets the needs of the citizen and establishes the most favourable climate for investment.
In this regard, The Minister of Economy, Finance, and Administration Reform voiced, during his presentation, that the Bill 46.18, is a result of the accumulated experiences extracted from the application of Law 86.12 on to public-private partnerships within four years. Moreover, the bill responds to the aspirations of international partners and funding institutions, to pursue supporting the State’s endeavour in the area of public investment.
Among the most important amendments listed by the Minister, those related to expanding the scope of law enforcement to comprise all public legal entities, from territorial authorities to their bodies, taking into consideration the specificity and uniqueness of these entities.
With the creation of a national structure for public-private partnership headed by the Prime Minister, the simplification and rationalisation of procedures, guarantees the speed and effectiveness partnership contract conclusion by simplifying the automatic offer procedure and clarifying the conditions for resorting to negotiating procedures.
Moreover, the bill aims at ensuring consistency and harmony between the requirements of the current law and sectoral private laws that refer to the partnership mechanism between the public and private sectors.
During the same plenary session, the house of representative unanimously adopts bill 55.19 on the simplification of procedures and administrative procedures.
In this regard, Mr. Noureddine Boutaib, Minister Delegate to the Minister of Interior stressed that the preparation of the bill, brings about the implementation of the high royal directives, as it will enable the creation of a new framework to enhance trust and transparency between administration and citizens and users, especially investors, by setting up a brand new mechanism to simplify procedures, digitizing them, expediting the processing of documents within limited time frame, and then establishing measures to enable the efficiency of the administrative endeavour in the best conditions.
Following the speech of the Minister Delegated to the Minister of the Interior, the majority caucuses and parliamentary group representing the opposition made interventions in the general debate, during which they explained their position on the bill and their proposals to enhance the administrative frameworks and procedures.
The bill has brought new developments, the most important of which is to define the general principles governing the new relationship between the administration and the user-citizen. The text made mandatory the administrations to list, classify documents and transcribe all administrative decisions of licences, permits and certificates, and to publicise them in a national platform to be established later. Subsequently, departments are required to set a deadline for the responses to the requests of the users-citizens in order to enhance the effectiveness of the administration and to ensure the codification of the time frame of their responses.
It is appropriate to mention that among the new features is the consideration of administration silence as approval, in conjunction with the establishment of the right of lodging an appeal for the user-citizen, with the aim of obligating the administration to respect the deadlines set to respond to the requests. Additionally the bill provides for the digitization of administrative procedures, as well as creating a national committee for the simplification of administrative procedures.