Ten Years of Water Service Reform in Latin America: Toward an Anglo-French Model (Water Supply & Sanitation Sector Board Discussion Paper Series No.3, January 2005)

The purpose of this report is to provide a synthesis and evaluation of the reform experience in the Latin American water supply industry during the eventful decade of the 1990s. To make the exercise tractable, the bulk of the discussion will focus on a “panel” of six countries – Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Peru – chosen to represent a variety of approaches to the reform process.
       
A comparative analysis of the reform in these six countries will be complemented by use of more detailed examples and case material. The report will consider three major components of reform in Latin America: a) the extent to which the water industry has been restructured and companies have been subject to institutional transformation, b) the ways in which different countries have redefined the role of the state by separating out the functions of policymaker and regulator, and c) the sorts of instruments that regulators in Latin America have developed to support the day-to-day functioning of the regulatory process.

Table of Contents:

1.    Introduction

2.    Sector Restructuring, or the Balkanization of Water
2.1    Sector structure
2.2    Private sector participation

3.    Redefining The Role of the State, or The Quest for Regulatory
3.1    Institutional Framework
3.2    Regulatory Structure
3.3    Regulatory Leadership
3.4    Regulatory Resources
3.5    Regulatory Accountability

4.    Developing Regulatory Instruments, or the Missing Rules of the Game
4.1    Legal Framework
4.2    Tariff Regulation
4.3    Regulation and Social Policy
4.4    Output Regulation
4.5    Regulatory Information

5.    Conclusions

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