Together with partner institutes in France and Russia Ecologic is identifying a set of benchmarking indicators for Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) services. These indicators are to assist the WSS sectoral reform and modernisation in the Newly Independent States (NIS). The results of the study will be published in the beginning of 2005.

Background

The development of performance indicators for Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) services has gradually become more important in the last years. On the one hand, this can be related to an increased interest of civil society in the status of those services which exerted pressure on regulatory authorities to publish comparative and reliable data, and on municipalities to justify their policies. On the other hand, benchmarking indicators have proved to be a useful instrument for sound financial decision-making and for entrepreneurial evaluation purposes.

Project objectives

The European Commission (DG Research) has initiated the Waterbench project, a Specific Support Action (SSA), with the intention to identify a set of benchmarking indicators adapted to the reform of the water supply and sanitation services of the Newly Independent States (NIS) of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. In particular, these indicators are to be utilised to help in the selection of necessary future investment programmes to be undertaken by State and local authorities, as well as International Financial Institutions (IFI) and other donor organisations active in this sector.

Ecologic in Waterbench

Ecologic prepares extensive reviews of current benchmarking practices and models for WSS services as well as adjacent sectors of infrastructure services such as energy and transport. These reviews focus on the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) as well as selected EU member states to derive lessons learned, which then serve as a reference for the development of similar benchmarking systems in the NIS.

Project results will be presented at an international expert workshop in Moldavia in December 2004.