Malanje - Two million US dollars is the amount to be spent by the Executive on drawing up a database of water resources in Angola's river basins, which began in January this year with the creation of an integrated platform for managing information on the country's waters.
Coordinated by the National Institute of Water Resources, the platform to be created aims to provide the country with a single water management tool that will make it possible to quantify and qualify the number of users of this liquid, as well as assessing the pressures they may face in the future.
The information was given on Thursday in the city by the deputy director general for the technical area of the National Water Resources Institute (INRH), Maita Luís Gomes, during the presentation of the project.
The project, part of the Water Sector Institutional Development Plan (PDISA II), will run for two years and in the pilot-phase will be implemented in the Kwanza river basin in Malanje, to validate the country's water resources database.
Co-financed by the Angolan Executive, the World Bank (WB) and the French Development Agency, the project will contribute to the efficient and sustainable management of water resources, which are becoming increasingly scarce, and also includes the expansion of the current hydrometric networks and the construction of new ones, to allow better control of the flows of Angola's rivers.
She explained, will allow the state to define policies to maintain the availability of water resources in terms of quality and quantity, through the promotion of national water plans and river basin utilisation plans.
She also emphasised that the Kwanza basin already has a development plan which includes various measures for the development of various actions and projects.
She emphasised that the country currently only has a river basin administration office for the Cunene, Cubango and Cuvelai basins, while the others are managed by the National Water Resources Institute.
For his part, the deputy governor for the Technical and Infrastructure sector, Duarte Ginga, considered the project to be an asset, as it will allow the country to register and control water resources, making rational use of them and managing them in a balanced way.
He pointed out that if the country had complete control over them, it would be possible to avoid major problems in the future.
The country currently has a water potential made up of 77 river basins, of which 47 are considered main basins, 30 secondary basins and 5 international basins. RM/NC/PBC/DOJ