Regulation of Water and Sanitation Services: Getting Better Service to Poor People (OBA Working Paper Series, No.8, June 2006)

This paper aims to provide practical guidance on how to evaluate regulatory arrangements and adapt them to be more conducive to expanding access and improving service to poor customers.
   
OBA approaches to improving water and sanitation service can work in a wide variety of circumstances. Such OBA schemes requires an understanding of the impact that existing regulatory arrangements have on water services to poor customers. The design of OBA schemes should therefore include an evaluation of the existing regulatory arrangements in order to identify what changes could potentially be made in order to get better services to poor people. If such changes can be introduced in the short-term, the need for external subsidies may be greatly reduced as a result. If such changes are not forthcoming, because of political resistance or high social costs, OBA may be introduced but would need to be adapted to the existing regulatory arrangements (taking account of their limits) or used as a lever to bring about changes in those arrangements.

Contents:

1.    Introduction

2.    Evaluating Existing Regulatory Arrangements
2.1    Regulating access expansion
2.2    Regulating tariffs
2.3    Regulating service quality
2.4    Regulating alternative service providers

3.    Regulation in The Context of OBA Schemes
3.1    Key issues in regulation and enhacing OBA
3.2    What additional information may be required
3.3    How can regulatory arrangements be modified

4.    Conclusions

Annex A – Further readings