UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water: The Challenge of Extending and Sustaining Services, 2012. GLASS 2012 Report.
WHO; UN Water.
This second UN-Water GlAAS report presents data received from 74 developing countries, covering all the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) regions, and from 24 external support agencies (eSAs), representing approximately 90% of official development assistance (oDA) for sanitation and drinking-water.
Key Messages
- Central government continues to be a major source of funding for water and sanitation, although many low- and middle-income countries remain dependent on external aid. external funding for WASh amounted to more than 1% of GDP in seven developing countries.
- Existing levels of household and private investment are poorly understood, but available data suggest that they are significant sources of financing and can make major contributions to supporting operation and maintenance of services.
- The majority of countries report that sector information systems for financial planning and reporting are inadequate.
- Data suggest that funds spent on operation and maintenance are insufficient. A majority of countries indicate that rural water supply programmes are not effective due to lack of funding, whereas one third of countries report that urban utilities lack revenue to fund operation and maintenance.
- Funding levels for WASh are reported to remain insufficient, especially for sanitation. Drinking-water continues to absorb the majority of WASh funding, even in countries with a relatively high drinking-water supply coverage and relatively low sanitation coverage.
- Most countries could not report how much they spend on hygiene, and for those that did, it was only about 2% of WASh expenditure.
- The breakdown of expenditure for WASh in rural and urban areas appears only weakly correlated with needs.
- Long procurement processes and heavy administrative burdens mean that many countries struggle to efficiently disburse the limited funds that are committed. Absorption of domestic capital commitments is higher than that of donor commitments, but appears to be declining. To strengthen the collection of WASh financial information, a harmonized method of data monitoring is needed (one such method is proposed in Annex B).
