Asseoir une véritable décentralisation économique

Establishing genuine economic decentralization

The challenges of the future President of the Republic in Algeria during the September 2024 election

For many years (see our contributions 1980/2024), I have called on public authorities to prepare viable and modern proposals in order to give broader prerogatives to elected officials, which raises the problem of decentralization inseparable from good governance in order to promote development and a participatory society.

Algeria covers 2,380,000 km2, including 2,100,000 km2 of Saharan space, sharing land borders with its 7 neighboring countries: Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia and Western Sahara, for a total of 6,511 km. The density seems low, but 9/10ths of the population are concentrated in the northern lands. The strategic objective for 2024/2030 is to prevent more than 95% of the population from living on less than 10% of the territory and to have another vision of spatial planning. Care should be taken not to confuse geographical space with economic space, which includes time, space being conceived as surface, distance and as a set of places. The voluntary statist conception of regional planning in Algeria, based on the famous theory of poles of development or growth, has been a decoy and has not had the expected effects. We are witnessing, unfortunately, anarchic constructions with the lack of homogenization in the architectural mode, an accelerated rate of urbanization with shanty towns around large cities, with the risk of the extension of new forms of violence through banditry and social ills such as drugs and prostitution. It is enough to visit all the wilayas, without exception, to see roads, infrastructures and works of art that have cost the national community several tens of billions of centimes unusable in the event of bad weather, roads torn up inside cities where most authorities are content only with the main roads visited by officials, garbage that has been piling up for years across the majority of peripheral districts, housing that citizens are renovating, especially the second works with unfinished VRD, green spaces that are making way for concrete, the construction of dangerous and polluting units near cities, tourist sites, near the coasts, containing several hundred beds and which dump their waste into the sea, not to mention the lack of water for hygiene. This is evidence of urgent actions whose responsibility does not only concern one ministerial department, but several at the same time as well as local authorities. This situation can have very serious consequences, with the “shanty towns” in terms of security which has a cost, hence the importance of regional planning and real decentralization.
I define economic decentralization as a mode of organization of the State that gives the region a role and an economic status of its own, characterized by a relative autonomy but not independent of the central regulatory State for the major strategic orientations both political and economic, this autonomy being therefore supervised by the national authority. Any economic decentralization raises the following fundamental questions: powers of the regions, rules of composition and functioning of the regional assemblies and executives, resources of the regions, relations with the central power, methods of transfer to regional powers and finally consultation between regions. The implementation of economic decentralization must result in a better real government felt as such by the population, the basic argument residing in geographical proximity. This means that there is a local solution to local problems and that this is necessarily better than a national solution. The diversity of local situations requires a diversity of solutions to adapt to specific local conditions. Economic decentralization requires clarity in the direction of socio-economic policy, avoiding tensions and conflicts between local and central power and competition between the center and the periphery, which allows for a new framework of power with new actors, new rules and new challenges with new strategies developed. The creation of a new public space should promote a new national social contract in order to make public service less expensive and more flexible and would generate a new public opinion, even a new civil society. The debate allows the emergence of common themes, common modes of proposals and therefore would determine optimal collective choices. Because excessive centralization favors an operating mode of authoritarian management of public affairs, governance by decree, that is to say, governance that imposes itself by force and authority far from the real needs of the populations.
The necessary reform of local authorities involves the reorganization of local power, the basis of which is the commune -APC-, requiring an upgrade for the mastery of management, the Wali – prefect in Europe) serving as a regulator and not a manager in order to promote a more participatory and civic society. After the all-State, the time has come for partnership between the different actors of economic and social life, for solidarity, for the search for all forms of synergy and for territorial engineering. It is in this context that the APC must appear as a unifying element of all initiatives that participate in the improvement of the living environment of the citizen, in the valorization and marketing of a space. It is up to the APC to promote its space for the reception of businesses and investment, which must be constituted as a learning center for local democracy that will hold it accountable for the accomplishment of its missions. Currently, the APC presidents have few management prerogatives, while being centralized at the level of the walis, while there is reason to think of another management mode, to move from the stage of local welfare communities to that of local business and citizen communities responsible for the development planning and marketing of its territory. For Algeria, it is a question of proceeding with another institutional organization, which will only be effective subject to precise objectives, to operate a necessary change which involves an approach based on a clear identification of missions and responsibilities and a restructuring of the functions and services responsible for the conduct of all administrative, financial, technical and economic activities. This institutional organization implies having another organization of both ministries and wilayas by groupings avoiding budget-eating micro institutions, including environmental protection. This organization must be flexible with the essential role of the prospective of the territory while avoiding administrative centralism, in order to build a productive base on more individuals and more space. It will not be a question of opposing the rural to the urban, the metropolises to the provinces, the big cities to the small ones but of organizing their solidarities. To do this, it will be a question of promoting a flexible urban framework through networks, the fluidity of exchanges, the circulation of people and goods, infrastructures, communication networks being the pillar. This implies a new architecture of cities, subsystems of better articulated networks, more interdependent although autonomous in their decisions. The effectiveness of land use planning measures to promote productive activities, implies the overhaul of local finances and parafiscal taxes without which the land use planning policy would have a limited scope, having to rely on the system of equalization between poor and rich regions which must be taken into account by the public authorities avoiding the largely outdated Jacobin centralizing spirit.
As I had recommended (see the multidisciplinary collective work bringing together economists, sociologists, political scientists, under my direction – “Reforms and democracy” published by Casbah in 2005), the structure that seems to me the most appropriate to create this dynamism, the regional chambers of commerce around six to seven regional poles which would bring together the wali, representative of the government, local elected officials, APC presidents, public/private companies, banks, professional training centers, universities and research centers. The action of the large regional chambers of commerce, a place of consultation but above all of impetus for the realization of projects would be fourfold. First, boost basic infrastructure and prepare sites entrusted to public and private real estate development agencies, secondly, the future belonging to knowledge, provide companies with a qualified workforce through an efficient and scalable training system ranging from engineers, managers, specialized technicians and this, thanks to university centers and research centers, For example, the chamber of commerce will offer a position for 10 candidates in training, the 90% not retained not constituting a loss for the region. Dynamic learning is human capital for future companies that settle in the region, an established company paying taxes that will largely cover the capital advances of advanced training. Because companies need access to researchers, laboratories for experimental tests and the university needs companies as financial support and especially to improve research. Students thus experience the dialectic between theory and practice. The third action is to promote flexible companies based on mobility and individual initiatives. Tests have shown that collective initiative, for certain products, allows saving on certain equipment (therefore having less depreciation in the cost structure) and reducing the process from seven minutes (420 seconds) to 45 seconds, i.e. a time saving of more than 90%, improving the productivity of the team’s work. What we call self-directed teams; the fourth action, the Chamber of Commerce intensifies the flow of exchange through different experiences between the regions of the country and the outside and the development of regional outlook tables, horizon 2024//2030 with the provision of all amenities to future investors (see our contribution the experience of the regional center of Greenville (USA www.google -Mebtoul 1995 following a long tour that I made in the USA).
In conclusion, the full success of this complex process of decentralization, an eminently political action, implies establishing the role of the State and its articulation with the market, which refers to the mode of governance. Regional planning placing the thinking and creative man at the heart of development must achieve a triple objective: a more balanced and more united society, growth at the service of employment and placing Algeria at the heart of the development of the Mediterranean and Africa (free zones must fit into this framework of Algeria’s natural space, in order to promote shared prosperity.

Abderrahmane Mebtoul
University Professor
International expert