Your search found 2 records
1 Fuente, D.; Gatua, J. G.; Ikiara, M.; Kabubo-Mariara, J.; Mwaura, M.; Whittington, D. 2016. Water and sanitation service delivery, pricing, and the poor: an empirical estimate of subsidy incidence in Nairobi, Kenya. Water Resources Research, 52(6):4845-4862. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/2015WR018375]
Water supply ; Water rates ; Pricing ; Sanitation ; Subsidies ; Water users ; Household expenditure ; Poverty ; Income ; Socioeconomic environment ; Cost analysis / Kenya / Nairobi
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047759)
(1.42 MB)
The increasing block tariff (IBT) is among the most widely used tariffs by water utilities, particularly in developing countries. This is due in part to the perception that the IBT can effectively target subsidies to low-income households. Combining data on households’ socioeconomic status and metered water use, this paper examines the distributional incidence of subsidies delivered through the IBT in Nairobi, Kenya. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that high-income residential and nonresidential customers receive a disproportionate share of subsidies and that subsidy targeting is poor even among households with a private metered connection. We also find that stated expenditure on water, a commonly used means of estimating water use, is a poor proxy for metered use and that previous studies on subsidy incidence underestimate the magnitude of the subsidy delivered through water tariffs. These findings have implications for both the design and evaluation of water tariffs in developing countries.
2 Fuente, D.; Kabubo-Mariara, J.; Kimuyu, P.; Mwaura, M.; Whittington, D. 2021. Assessing the performance of water and sanitation tariffs: the case of Nairobi, Kenya. Water Resources Research, 58p. (Online first) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025791]
Water use ; Sanitation ; Water pricing ; Tariffs ; Wastewater ; Water conservation ; Policy making ; Cost recovery ; Water rates ; Developing countries ; Households / Africa / Kenya / Nairobi
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H050582)
(0.96 MB)
Policymakers and utility managers can use a variety of tariff structures to calculate customers’ bills for water and sanitation services, ranging from a simple fixed monthly fee to complicated multi-part tariffs with seasonal pricing based on metered water use. This paper examines the performance of several alternative tariff structures for water and wastewater services in Nairobi, Kenya using a dynamic tariff simulation model applied to a complete set of billing records from Nairobi City Water and Sewer Company. Simulations show that a uniform volumetric price tariff structure performs as well as or better than several increasing block tariff structures across the six performance metrics considered (customer welfare, social welfare, cost recovery, the subsidy delivered through the tariff, subsidy incidence, and water conservation). These findings are robust to changes in the level of cost recovery. This finding challenges the wisdom of the widespread use of increasing block tariffs (IBTs) in low- and middle-income countries and current perceptions of best practice in tariff design.
Powered by DB/Text WebPublisher, from
