The public-private mix in urban water supply (original) (raw)
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A comparative institutional analysis of public and private operations in the urban water sector
2015
This PhD by published work comprises nine papers published between 2000 and 2013 and a case for support. The research focuses upon the comparative institutional analysis of public and private operations of urban water supply and sanitation services in developed, transition and developing countries. This topic is of scholarly relevance because the debate on the relative efficiency of public and private water operations remains unresolved. The research objectives are to evaluate theoretical expectations of private sector efficiency and public sector inefficiency, and identify the fundamental causal mechanism of the relative efficiency of public and private operations in the urban water sector. In the aim of contributing to a critical realist theory of the firm, the review of extant theory is situated within the metatheoretical debate between orthodox and heterodox economic theory. To support the investigation of the duality of agency and institutions, a composite analytical framework ...
Current issues in Private sector participation (PSP) in water services
Development Policy Review, 2006
Privatization of public infrastructure became the mantra of many development agencies since the late 1980s. Water supply was not an exception and different forms of private sector participation (PSP) in water supply have been experimented. Among the policy circles, privatization became the objective in itself rather than a means of increasing access or helping the poor and increasing the overall performance of the economy. This article examines the results achieved by these experiments. The evidence shows that PSP has mixed results and private sector is not more efficient than the public sector. It also shows that in most cases PSP did not deliver as it was expected. Despite growing failures and increasing public pressure, the article concludes that PSP debate is still alive, but repackaged through different forms.
Public and Private Management of Water Services
In all Member States of the European Union, and even world-wide, privatisation of water supply and the sewerage services is a controversial topic of political debate around issues concerning the status and ownership of water services as natural monopolies. Any nationalisation, privatisation or municipalisation, any corresponding alteration in the regulatory regime constitutes a significant change of the institutional mechanism of water management with effects going far beyond the narrow areas of water supply and sewerage disposal. And this is an area in which the policies of the European Union have, or can have, significant effects. This paper, based on the results of the EUROWATER Project, addresses exclusively water supply and sewerage services in conurbations with centralised supplies.
2016
Esta tesis se centrara en el analisis de las soluciones de distribucion de agua y servicios de saneamiento en el contexto de las areas peri-urbanas y rurales. Se investigara si las asociaciones publico-publicas (PuP) pueden representar una alternativa valida y eficaz a la participacion del sector privado. Como destacado por la PSIRU (en Hall et al, 2005: 4), hay diferentes tipos de PuPs, incluyendo una gran variedad de actores: autoridades publicas nacionales, comunidades, ONG, sindicatos, autoridades publicas internacionales y asociaciones internacionales. Esta tesis se centrara en un tipo especifico de las PuPs, las asociaciones entre las autoridades publicas y las comunidades, donde la responsabilidad de la prestacion de servicios se transfiere progresivamente a partir de los gobiernos nacionales hacia la poblacion local. Esta eleccion esta motivada por la creciente importancia dada a la participacion de la poblacion local en el desarrollo de iniciativas que afectan directa o ind...
Public–private delivery of urban water services in Africa
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 2008
The period between 1990 and 1997 saw a record growth in the number of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for provision of water/sewerage services in developing countries. Nonetheless, PPPs have not fared well in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for 80% of the PPP contracts that attracted disputes or were cancelled between 1990 and 2004. Since the 1980s, management contracts between international water operators and utilities in Africa have been promoted by the World Bank and other multi-international agencies as a model that could boost management capacity in utilities of developing countries and lead to improved effectiveness and efficiency. The present study draws upon empirical data from Kampala, Uganda and uses it as a case study to show that, on the whole, these expectations were not fulfilled. It is demonstrated that the performance improvements of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation, the utility in Kampala, were not as high as expected when it was twice managed by different international operators. On the other hand, the corporation has made impressive performance improvements under the current public management model. Conclusions have been drawn from the case study on what are the drivers of performance improvement in the water utilities of developing countries.
2012
This book proposes a synthesis of several of the works carried out for the research program, as well as a comparison with other works treating a similar problem. It combines academic contributions as well as analyses by operational actors involved in reflections on how the sector evolves. The choice of the water and sanitation sector was motivated by the particular difficulty of funding investments that show little profit, when compared to telecommunications or electricity for instance, and by the highly sensitive political question of access to this particularly essential good (water rights; conflicts related to water management). Cultural notions, such as water that is a ‘gift from heaven’, etc., further complicate this field. The objective of this work is thus to retrace the dynamics of reflecting upon the role of private actors. It shows the great diversity of situations as well as the viewpoint of the actors concerning the contributions of, and the problems created by, these in...
Revista Brasileira De Gestao E Desenvolvimento Regional, 2014
We developed a concise literature review to investigate if public or private ownership is a determinant factor on the performance of water supply systems. This is a relevant research issue because privatization and increased private sector participation in water supply systems are global trends, aimed to improve the low levels of performance and efficiency of these systems.The evidences collected in the literature shows that the ownership, itself, is not a determining factor on the performance levels of water supply systems. This finding shows that privatization can be an inefective operation to improve water supply systems performance, if other factors are not jointly considered. Regulation, competition and transparency are the main factors that define the efficiency and performance of this sector.