Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Priority given to the sector

The drinking water and sanitation sector is a permanent and prominent item on governments’ agendas, being an important part of public policy. The results achieved in most cases, however, suggest that the sector has often been given low priority among government activities, particularly in respect to budget allocations, probably because the governments tend to emphasize solving short-term problems or those which can yield short-term results, postponing the attainment of long- term strategic targets, which are often vague or even non-existent.
Attempts at sectoral reform, through the strengthening of state-owned service providers or private sector participation, have lacked strategic vision in many coun- tries, focusing more on normative and formal issues rather than on effective policy changes in the sector and the vital elements which could bring about the necessary transformation. This has been the case in Argentina and Bolivia, where new insti- tutions which arose in the 1990s, were developed alongside the involvement of private service provision. Specific contracts were established between the respon- sible public authorities and the service provider on the basis of a legal framework with general guidelines, and the private service provision was unable to satisfy the resulting expectations and became unstable in the face of political changes and complaints from civil society.
On the other hand, the most recent stages of the transformation strategy in Chile and Colombia were based on a specific legal framework with the character- istics of a state policy. In both of these countries, the process was facilitated by a non-federal political and administrative organization. The legal framework and the institutional organization were not directly linked to private sector participation, and initial contents together with subsequent normative approaches set up regu- lations and procedures which were essentially technical, with a view to creating sustainable and efficient conditions for service provision regardless of whether the private or public sector was involved.
Priority treatment of the sector should take place through an integrated ap- proach that demands recognition of the considerable externalities involved in the provision of drinking water and sanitation services. Decisions on spending and investment in the sector should take due account of the socio-economic costs incurred when those services are in deficit. This, in turn, would mean that the regulation of the sector should contain explicit targets for universal coverage with binding deadlines as well as mechanisms with suitable incentives to ensure that service management is efficient and economically and environmentally sound.

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