WORLD BANK SAYS 'COMMUNITY ACTION' BETTER FOR PROVIDING WATER. Governments should be enablers and regulators of community action for the efficient delivery of water, not water service providers, reports Businessworld (the Philippines). In a briefing at World Water Forum in The Hague, World Bank Vice-President for Special Programs Ismail Serageldin said governments should enable communities to take care of themselves given their enormous capacity to do so.
Serageldin, who also chairs the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, which formulated a comprehensive analysis of the world's water resources being used as the central document of the forum, also said that given the envisioned reforms, governments need not raise the additional investments themselves, nor turn to the World Bank for more loans. Enabled communities, together with the private sector, could raise the $180 billion needed as annual investment for water services, from the current $70 million to $80 billion. France 2 "Télématin" also reports.
"However, it doesn't mean that governments step back without anything to do; not only do they create the enabling framework for the community and the regulatory framework that allows the private sector to function, but they also have three additional responsibilities," AFP notes Serageldin noted. These were targeting subsidies to the poorest, enforcing the overall links in the water delivery system, and protecting the environment.
Expanding World Bank loans would not result in widespread benefits, he added. "We need to go much further; it's not just Bank loans. Otherwise, we don't make a dent in the scale of the problem we have globally," he is quoted as saying. The World Bank is the largest financier of water projects all over the world, spending about $2.9 billion a year, the story notes.
Serageldin denied accusations from NGOs that the World Commission on Water's report presented a "corporate vision for privatizing water", reports El País (Spain, p.34). The document does not so much seek the privatization of water services as to demonstrate that if water is provided free of charge, people do not appreciate its true value and consequently tend to waste it. Water is a fundamental human right, he said, but this does not mean it should be provided for free. "Only competition will bring prices down," he is quoted as saying.