Abstract
Despite three decades of official initiatives and legislation, Denmark is the only country that uses tariffs to fund capital as well as operating spending as well as to encourage demand management. Full cost recovery remains uncommon and, in developing economies, tariffs have fallen behind rising operating costs. Political opposition towards cost recovery tariffs is widespread, coupled with the belief that water ought to be ‘free’ while even then, sanitation remains its poor cousin.
Government subsidies for capital are substantial, but heavily biased towards improving services to the better off and the already connected. Water and sanitation remain a low Official Development Assistance priority. This especially applies to providing basic access. A lack of accessible or affordable debt funding in developing countries compounds these shortfalls.
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Lloyd Owen, D. (2020). Funding Flows Today. In: Global Water Funding. Palgrave Studies in Natural Resource Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49454-4_5
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