Cost Recovery in Urban Water Services:Select Experiences in Indian Cities, 2011.
- Full-text (pdf)
Water and Sanitation Program
Water services in more than half of the 23 cities analyzed here are suffering substantial operational losses. None of these ULBS met their revenue potential, and most of them fail to cover their operational costs by up to 80 percent. It is true that low tariffs are a reason for this: tariffs are mostly based on estimates rather than quantified costs and margins. However, the study draws attention to the fact that a large part of cost recovery concerns operational factors such as low coverage of registered connections, high levels of leakage and NRW, poor metering practices, and inefficient billing and collection.
