Financing and Cost Recovery

Few countries have realistic policies, operational strategies or plans for cost recovery and financing for sustainable water supply services, particularly for the poor. In fact most of the strategies for cost recovery are short sighted and address only part of the issue of sustainability, resulting in system degradation. Governments, development agencies and communities all over the world are struggling with this. This focus area needs to be addressed urgently.

WASH News Finance

This blog contains news related to the financing of water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in developing countries, collected by Cor Dietvorst, the editor of Source Weekly published by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

IRC work featuring in microfinance market study

IRC’s Catarina Fonseca and Stef Smits and nine publications from IRC and partners are featuring in: Assessing Micro finance for Water and Sanitation – Exploring opportunities for sustainable scaling up, a study by Meera Mehta for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,

IRC Symposium 2010

The IRC 2010 Symposium, 'Pumps, Pipes and Promises: Costs, Finances and Accountability for Sustainable WASH Services' will take place in The Hague, The Netherlands from 16 - 18 November. The symposium will bring together some 120 of the sectors' foremost international experts and practitioners to address issues around costing, financing and accountability of WASH service delivery.

Please visit this page for regular updates on the IRC Symposium 2010.

How can we finance the costs of decentralised WASH Services?

Over recent years a better picture of how money flows in the WASH sector is emerging. But it can still be hard to identify the balance of where WASH money comes from in terms of taxes, tariffs and transfers, and where it goes over time. In countries facing the biggest challenges in meeting the MDGs, financial requirements far exceed available funds, but in many cases existing funds are also not used cost-effectively.

WASHCost

The WASHCost Project (2008-2012) in which IRC and partners are involved, researches the life-cycle costs of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in rural and peri-urban areas in four countries. The rationale is that WASH governance will improve at all levels, as decision makers and stakeholders analyse the costs of sustainable, equitable and efficient services and put their knowledge to use.

News

The Financing and Cost Recovery News pages contain the latest information on:

Announcement of events, publications, workshops and trainings;
Brief reports on conferences and Thematic Group meeting proceedings; and,
News flashes on developments in the area of financing and cost recovery for water supply