Achieving Financial Sustainability and Recovering Costs in Bank Financed Water Supply and Sanitation and Irrigation Projects

In its 2010 Evaluation of World Bank support to the Water Sector during the 1997 to 2007 period, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) highlighted the progress achieved and pointed out issues that still need to be addressed more systematically. The Evaluation noted that: “although the portfolio [of water projects] has performed well when measured against projects’ stated objectives, the Bank and the borrowing countries have not yet sufficiently tackled several tough but vital issues, among them broadening access to sanitation, fighting pollution, restoring degraded aquatic environments, monitoring and data collection and cost recovery”.