Economías de escala en agua y saneamiento: examen de la literatura

This study is aimed to survey the international literature on economies of scale in the water and sanitation sector, to synthesize it, and to extract a common thread. In the whole world they are been discussing how to provide a more equitable access and a more efficient provision. One issue related with efficiency is the possibility of taking advantage from economies of scale. The sector industrial structures had been changing in many places, through consolidation of highly atomized services, or the split of concentrated providers, or by changes in the pattern of providers' property, and those changes had been matter of heavy discussions. Some decisions could be very complex, because of political and social interests. The theoretical discussion and empirical results on scale economics in water and sanitation are useful to discover the trade-offs between concentration and de-concentration of services as policy measures.The studies from an important set of countries show scale economies (in different countries with different situations) in population served between 100 thousand to 1 million (in some cases extending to many millions), or with population densities of until 250 inhabitants per square kilometers, or with volumes up to 70 million of cubic meters per year. With lower populations, volumes or densities, first we can expect constant returns to scale, and next, in the larger enterprises, diseconomies of scale; in smaller providers, there are gains of agglomerating services.