Americas: LatAm could double water investment

Latin America could additional than double its much-needed investment in drinking water and sanitation services simply by controlling the widespread inefficiency in the industry, development bank CAF said in a statement.

CAF estimated that Latin American nations lose US$5.78bn a year due to delinquencies, over employment in the industry and water lost due to misused or broken pipes.

That all additional than doubles Latin America's US$4.4bn a year investment in the industry and could help close the gap with the US$12.5bn a year CAF estimated the region needs to expand sanitation services and provide universal drinking water access.

Latin America loses 40%- 50% of its water resources through broken pipes, its delinquency rates exceeds 15% in average and has almost twice as a lot of workers in the sector than is needed, according to international standards.

That translates into overemployment costs of US$1.82bn a year, an extra US$1.91bn in water lost and US$2.05bn in delinquencies.

Inefficiency gets to such levels that while the UN suggests that each person needs 20l-50l of water a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning, in Buenos Aires residents consume between 500l-600l a day.

To get in line with international standards, Latin America should cut delinquencies to zero, and reduce water lost and employment by half.

"Excluding a small group of companies that are at the same level of the best in the world, there are lots of systems with low quality, interrupted and inefficient services. That segment, unfortunately, sets the predominant trend," CAF said in a statement.

Latin America has completed 90% access to drinking water, but one fourth of those connections are precarious or unstable. Furthermore, less than 30% of the people has access to water treatment services.