Water supply and sanitation in Argentina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Argentina faces five key challenges in the water supply and sanitation sector: (i) low coverage with higher levels of service provision for its income level; (ii) poor service quality; and (iii) high levels of pollution; (iv) low cost recovery; and (v) unclear allocation of responsibilities between institutions in the sector.
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[edit] Access
While Argentina has achieved high coverage levels in urban areas using a broad definition of access, coverage in rural areas and coverage at a higher service levels (house connections) remains low for a country of Argentina’s level of development.
| Urban (90% of the population) | Rural (10% of the population) | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water | Broad definition | 98% | 80% | 96% |
| House connections | 83% | 45% | 79% | |
| Sanitation | Broad definition | 92% | 83% | 91% |
| Sewerage | 48% | 5% | 44% |
Source: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program, 2004 data based on data from the 1991 and 2001 censuses [1]
[edit] Service quality
Water rationing in summer months is a frequent occurrence in practically all major cities, and drinking water quality is often sub-standard. Existing sewage collection systems are insufficient to handle the increasing flows as a growing number of households connect to the sewer systems, leading to frequent sewer overflows.
[edit] Responsibility for water supply and sanitation
[edit] Service provision
Provision of water and sanitation supply in Argentina is organized on a municipal or provincial basis by around 1,650 public, cooperative and private entities of various forms. Some service providers cover an entire province, some a number of municipalities, some a single municipality and others parts of a municipality.
[edit] Policy and regulation
Provinces have responsibility for setting rules and policies in the sector for their area. Institutions are weak, subject to political interference and lacking in enforcement powers. 14 out of 23 provinces have regulatory bodies, but they often have limited capacity and unclear institutional responsibilities. In most cases, they act as supervisors of private concession contracts, not covering public and cooperative service providers.
At the national level, despite recent progress in clarifying responsibilities, the institutional framework still lacks coherence and coordination among federal actors is weak. The Public Works Secretariat (SOP) [2] proposes sector policies to the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services [3] which approves them. Within this policy framework the National Agency for Water and Sanitation Works (ENOHSA) [4], a decentralized agency under SOP, provides financing and technical to service providers. Recently ENOHSA has been also given the faculty to directly execute infrastructure works. There has been some confusion between its position as conceding power (in the Buenos Aires concession) and as policy-maker for the overall sector. There is no coherent national policy in terms of sector financing, subsidies, tariffs and service standards. Nor is there a sector law for water and sanitation. The federal structure of the country and the dispersion of sector responsibilities between and within various levels of government make the development of a coherent sector policy all the more difficult.
[edit] History and recent developments
From 1880 until 1980, the national utility Obras Sanitarias de la Nación (OSN) was in charge of providing water and sewer services in the main cities, while in smaller cities it was the responsibility of provincial governments, municipalities and coopertatives.
With the decentralization of 1980 OSN transferred its responsibilities to provincial governments, except for the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires where it continued to provide services. Each province chose its model of service provision (municipal, public enterprises, cooperatives or others).
Between 1991 and 1999 under the government of Carlos Menem, as part of one of the worlds largest privatization programs covering a range of sectors, water and sanitation concessions with the private sector were signed in 28% of the country's municipalities covering 60% of the population.[2] The highest profile concession was signed in 1993 with a consortium led by the French firm SUEZ for the city of Buenos Aires. After the 2001 economic crisis, under the government of Nestor Kirchner, many concessions were renegotiated. Some were even terminated and the responsibility for service provision reverted to public entities, as it was the case in Buenos Aires where the newly created public enterprise Aguas y Saneamientos Argentinos took over the responsibility for service provision in 2006.[3]
[edit] Tariffs, cost recovery and financing
Most service providers barely recover operation and maintenance costs and have no capacity to self-finance investments. While private operators were able to achieve higher levels of cost recovery and to substantially expand services before the crisis, since 2002 their tariffs have been frozen and their self-financing capacity has disappeared. Service providers thus are almost entirely dependent on federal transfers for investment financing. Roughly two-thirds of provincial water and sanitation spending over the period has come from general transfers from the federal government, the remainder coming from various programs directed specifically to the sector, including for flood protection and water resources management.
[edit] Impact of private sector participation
So far there has been no comprehensive, objective assessment of the impact of private sector participation in water supply and sanitation in Argentina. However, there has been some partial evidence. For example, a 2002 study assessed the impact of privatization on child mortality based on household survey data, finding that in the 1991-1997 period child mortality fell 5 to 7 percent more in areas that privatized compared to those that remained under public or cooperative management. It also found that the effect was largest in poorest areas (24%). The authors estimate that the main reason is the massive expansion of access to water, which was concentrated in poorer areas that did not receive services before private sector participation was introducted.[4]
According to SUEZ, during the 13 year-duration of its concession for Buenos Aires it extended access to water to 2 million people and access to sanitation to 1 million people, despite severe difficulties related to the country's economic situation after 2001. Between 2003 and 2005 alone about 100,000 inhabitants of poor neighborhoods and slums are said to have been connected through a "participatory management model" piloted by Aguas Argentinas. Aspects of the model have been adopted by the government to extend services to another 400,000 people in La Matanza in the province of Buenos Aires in the project "Water plus work" ("Aguas más trabajo").[5]
[edit] References
- ^ WHO/UNICEF JMP Sanitation and Water
- ^ Galiani et al., p.9
- ^ Argentinian government website on Public Services[1] and Spanish Wikipedia article
- ^ Galiani et al. 2002
- ^ SUEZ Environnement 2007
[edit] External links
- Government of Argentina page on Water Supply and Sanitation [5]
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