Water, Politics and Money

This book analyzes the privatization and the public management of water and sewer utilities in twelve countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Uganda, Bolivia, Argentina and Cuba. Having a private water company take over a local water supply system brings up elementary fears. Will private water companies overcharge their customers? Will they cut off those who cannot afford to pay? Will they cut corners, compromising water quality or service quality, letting infrastructure deteriorate for the sake of higher profits? But besides fear there are also other questions: Can private companies perhaps bring about improvements, beyond and above what publicly managed companies have achieved? And do publicly managed water utilities perform better than private companies when utilities are remunicipalized ? In short, this book is a reality check on privatization and its alternatives.§§It covers very different forms of privatization , from the outright sale of companies to various forms of public-private partnerships , each tailored to the objectives that governments were trying to achieve at the time of their introduction. The book also analyzes publicly managed water utilities that failed and succeeded, including those in Uganda and Cambodia, two of the poorest countries in the world, where they substantially increased access, became more efficient and improved service quality.§§