Private sector participation in water projects has expanded threefold during the last decade, notes the IFC inHandshake, a quarterly journal on public-private partnerships. "With an average of 50 projects and $2-3 billion investment commitments per year, 535 water projects benefiting from private participation have reached financial closure during the last 10 years. Commitments to water projects with private participation totaled about $34 billion in that period of time."
The journal is timely as thousands gather in Marseille for the 6th World Water Forum which opened yesterday and the Alternative World Water Forum which opens tomorrow. United Nations Special Rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque warned on Friday that the right to safe drinking water and sanitation would be sidelined at the Forum, a key global gathering of delegates from 140 governments, international organizations, civil society and the scientific community, representing more than 180 countries.
"It comes as an unwelcome surprise that the draft ministerial declaration of the 6th World Water Forum: Time for Solutions still does not recognize the human right to water and sanitation that has been explicitly recognized at the UN," said the expert charged by the Human Rights Council with promoting, monitoring and reporting on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
In the face of opposition to private sector involvement in the supply of water, IFC Environment and Social Development Director, Greg Radford, believes that "to meet the Millennium Development Goal for safe water, improved access in low-income countries can be enhanced significantly though creative deployment of the financial and other resources of the private sector."
According to the IFC, during the last decade, more than 55 percent of water private public partnerships (PPPs) were signed by private firms from low- and middle-income countries. The opening of China to private participation in water infrastructure and its emergence as the first water PPP market among low- and middle-income countries was one of the most important changes of the decade.
"And although price increases are often used as an argument against private public partnerships (PPPs) in the water sector, this is not necessarily borne out by the facts. In a sample of 1,200 water and energy utilities in 71 developing and transition countries, no systematic change in residential prices occurred as a result of PPPs", observes the IFC.
Nelson Beete, Chairman of Fundo do Investimento e Patrimonio do Abastecimento de Agua (FIPAG) in Mozambique, believes that in developing countries, there is a school of thought that involving the private sector in such a basic service like water is controversial.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23366
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