IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/2344.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Designing direct subsidies for water and sanitation services - Panama : a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Foster, Vivien
  • Gomez-Lobo, Andres
  • Halpern, Jonat

Abstract

As an alternative to traditional subsidy schemes in utility sectors, direct subsidy programs have several advantages: they are transparent, they are explicit, and they minimize distortions of the behavior of both the utility, and the customers. At the same time, defining practical eligibility criteria for direct subsidy schemes is difficult, and identifying eligible households may entail substantial administrative costs. The authors, using a case study from Panama, discuss some of the issues associated with the design of direct subsidy systems for water services. The conclude that: 1) There is a need to assess - rather than assume - the need for a subsidy. A key test of affordability, and thus of the need for a subsidy, is to compare the cost of the service, with some measure of household willingness to pay. 2) The initial assessment must consider the affordability of connection costs as well as the affordability of the service itself. Connection costs may be prohibitive for poor households with no credit, suggesting a need to focus subsidies on providing access, rather than ongoing water consumption. 3) A key issue in designing a direct subsidy scheme is its targeting properties. Poverty is a complex phenomenon, and difficult to measure. Eligibility must therefore be based on easily measurable proxy variables, and good proxies are hard to find. In choosing eligibility criteria for a subsidy, it is essential to verify what proportion of the target group fails to meet the criteria (errors of exclusion) and what proportion of non-target groups is inadvertently eligible for the benefits (errors of inclusion). 4) administrative costs are roughly the same no matter what the level of individual subsidies, so a scheme that pays beneficiaries very little, will tend not to be cost-effective. It is important to determine what proportion of total program costs will be absorbed by administrative expenses. 5) Subsidies should not cover the full cost of the service, and should be contingent on beneficiaries paying their share of the bill. Subsidies for consumption above a minimum subsistence level, should be avoided. Subsidies should be provided long enough before eligibility is reassessed to avoid "poverty trap" problems. 6) The utility or concessionaire can be helpful in identifying eligible candidates, because of its superior information on the payment histories of customers. It will also have an incentive to do so, since it has an interest in improving poor payment records. Thought should therefore be given at the design stage to the role of the service provider in the implementation of the subsidy scheme. 7) The administrative agency's responsibilities, the sources of funding, and the general principles guiding the subsidy system should have a clear legal basis, backed by regulations governing administrative procedures. 8) To reduce administrative costs, and avoid duplication of effort, it would be desirable for a single set of institutional arrangements to be used to determine eligibility for all welfare, and subsidy programs in a given jurisdiction, whether sub-national, or national.

Suggested Citation

  • Foster, Vivien & Gomez-Lobo, Andres & Halpern, Jonat, 2000. "Designing direct subsidies for water and sanitation services - Panama : a case study," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2344, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2344
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/314341468763185877/pdf/multi-page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wichsinee Wibulpolprasert & Bhawin Teveyanun & Tanyathorn Osataphan, 2018. "Evaluating Thailand's Free Basic Electricity Program," PIER Discussion Papers 87, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Philippe Marin, 2009. "Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Water Utilities : A Review of Experiences in Developing Countries," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2703.
    3. Whittington, Dale & Nauges, Céline & Fuente, David & Wu, Xun, 2015. "A diagnostic tool for estimating the incidence of subsidies delivered by water utilities in low- and medium-income countries, with illustrative simulations," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 70-81.
    4. Wodon, Quentin & Estache, Antonio & Foster, Vivien, 2002. "Making infrastructure reform in Latin America work for the poor," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    5. Basani, Marcello & Isham, Jonathan & Reilly, Barry, 2008. "The Determinants of Water Connection and Water Consumption: Empirical Evidence from a Cambodian Household Survey," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 953-968, May.
    6. Luis A. Andrés & J. Luis Guasch & Thomas Haven & Vivien Foster, 2008. "The Impact of Private Sector Participation in Infrastructure : Lights, Shadows, and the Road Ahead," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6545.
    7. Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia & Estache, Antonio & Shafik, Nemat, 2004. "Infrastructure services in developing countries : access, quality, costs and policy reform," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3468, The World Bank.
    8. De Oliveira Alberto, 2020. "Financial innovations and sanitation services: the battle between low-income users and shareholders," Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, Sciendo, vol. 47(47), pages 63-74, March.
    9. Vivien Foster & José Luis Guasch & Luis Andrés & Thomas Haven, 2008. "The Impact of Private Sector Participation in Infrastructure: Lights, Shadows, and the Road Ahead," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 59818, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2344. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.