Post-construction support to rural water supplies: costs and impacts
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Water MDG
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Capital expenditure dominates
Management /recurrent expenditure
dominates
Coverage rates
Sector effort and costs
25% 50% 75% 100%
Danger zone: as basic infrastructure is provided, rate of
coverage growth risks stagnating
Capital maintenance exp. dominates
But…. a danger zone looms
(Moriarty, 2011)
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Background
• Wide acceptance that majority of community-based service providers are unable to manage their water supply without some form of support– Direct support: structured support activities to service providers as well
as to users or user groups
– Indirect support creating and regulating the enabling environment for rural water supply services provision and support to service authorities
• Yet, very little data available on the impact of direct and indirect support and what it costs
• Literature study as well as primary data collection on costs (Andhra Pradesh, Ghana and Mozambique) and impacts of support (Colombia, Ghana)
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Arrangements for providing direct support
Arrangement for supportagent
Some examples
Direct supportby local government
Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique and Uganda
Local governmentsubcontracting a specialised agency
South Africa: municipalities can contract a Support Services Agency (SSA), which can be a private company or a NGO (Gibson 2010)
Central governmentor parastatal agencies
•Honduras: circuit riders•Chile, regional utilities contracted by Central Ministry
Association of community-based service providers
The Sistema Integrado de Saneamento Rural (SISAR) in north-eastern Brazil combines association of community-based service providers with support from a state-level utilityHonduras: AHJASA
NGOsEl Salvador: The Asociación Salvadoreña de Servicios de Agua (ASSA) offers direct support using a circuit rider model.
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Effectiveness of arrangements for direct support
• Earlier research had shown that most communities receive some support
• But, what impact does it have?
• What are the most effective arrangements?
– Ad hoc and on demand arrangements
– Structured support arrangements
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Impact of direct support: Ghana
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
%o
f W
ATS
AN
s m
ee
tin
g th
e b
en
chm
ark
on
se
rvic
e p
rovi
de
r in
dic
ato
rs
Percentage of WATSANs meeting service provider benchmark, without monitoring support
Percentage of WATSANs meeting service provider benchmark, with monitoring support
Source; Adank et al., 2012 forthcoming
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Impact of direct support: Colombia
• Survey of 40 rural systems:– 29 with structured support
– 9 with ad hoc support
– 2 had not received any support at all
• Those with structured support have significantly better performing service providers; impact on service levels is positive but not significant
Number of systems Average performance
score of the service
provider (on scale of 0-
100)
Average score for service
level (on scale of 0-5)
Systems linked to post-
construction support model
29 61.1 3.63
Systems without structured
post-construction support
11 48.1 3.52
Source; Smits et al., 2012
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Impact of direct support: Colombia
Sin modelo de apoyo
Aguas Manantiale
s Pacora
Comite de Cafeteros
UES Rural Cali
Aguas de Manizales
AQUACOLSecretaria Vivienda Caldas
Programa Cultura
Empresarial
Calificacion promedia en gestion tecnico-operativa
14.7 14.7 17.2 17.1 19.0 17.7 20.2 26.9
Calificacion promedia en gestion administrativa
18.6 20.7 20.1 19.9 19.5 25.6 21.6 30.9
Calificacion promedia de gobernanza y legalidad
17.4 15.0 17.7 18.3 17.8 23.7 25.2 25.6
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
70.0
80.0
90.0
100.0
Pe
rfo
rman
ce o
f se
rvic
e p
rovi
de
r sc
ore
Score in technical performance
Score in administrative performance
Score in organizational performance
No support
Source; Smits et al., 2012
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Impact of direct support: Colombia
• High variability within and between support models; not clear that one model works better than another
• Need to look at the underlying factors that explain effectiveness of models:
– degree of institutionalisation
– frequency of support
– inter-institutional character of support model
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
90.00
0 (n=2) 1-4 (n=16) 5-8 (n=13) 9-12 (n=4) Más de 12 (n=5)
Pe
rfo
rman
ce o
f se
rvic
e p
rovi
de
r
Frequency of support visits
Source; Smits et al., 2012
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Costs of direct support
• Costs of:
– Salaries of support providers
– Travel and accommodation
– Materials for training etc
– Overhead
• Difficult to collect and compile data
– Little structured capturing of such data
– No unified criteria
– Often combined with other cost categories of operation, maintenance and replacement
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Comparing expenditure on direct support in various case studies
Case ExpDS (US$/ person/ year)
Mozambique 0.0015El Salvador 0.25India (Andhra Pradesh) 0.32Mali 0.34 Ghana 0.78Honduras 0.90Namibia 1.12-2.76 (actual)
2.59-5.49 (required) South Africa 1.69-3.93Chile 3.44Brazil 3.63
Source; Smits et al., 2011
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Expenditure and costs of direct support
• Annual expenditure on direct support of less than US$ 1 per person per year reported that the relevant agencies were unable to fulfil their mandate (Ghana, Mozambique)
• Annual expenditure of above US$ 3 per person all reported reasonable levels of functionality (South Africa, Chile, Brazil)
• Realistic cost of support is probably a couple of US dollars per person per year
• In countries with higher expenditure on support, this is not provided by local government, but by dedicated agencies
• Some scope for user contributions, but largely financed through taxes of transfers
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Conclusions• Many community-based service providers demand
and access external support
– Though few in a structured way
• Little data available suggests that direct support to service providers leads to better performing service providers
• But doesn’t necessarily translate into better services
– Other factors at play
– Type and levels of support are in many places not adequate
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Conclusions• There is not a single type of “best” institutional
arrangement; contributing factors include: frequency, degree of institutionalization and inter-institutional character
• Direct support is not cheap – 2-3 US$/person/year seems to be needed; below 1 US$/person/year too low to have any impact
• Scope for some user contributions, but to be funded largely through taxes and transfer
• To be part of recurrent costs so as to avoid a danger zone
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Next steps
• Develop clarity of mandate for support, assessing also existing informal arrangements
• Identify strengths and gaps of these models and possible ways of strengthening them and/or develop new modalities for support
• Studies on existing expenditure combined with modelling of adequate financial resources – 2 to 3 US$ per person per year?
• Identifying financing sources for direct support costs