Dear Guy,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I have moved this thread into our category on costs and financing now so that it's easier to find it again in future.

For those who don't know (this included myself until a few moments ago): WTP stands for Willingness to pay in Guy's post, not water treatment plant.
Wikipedia has this to say about Willingness to pay: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay (article could be improved)

Oh and thanks for your words of praise about SuSanA - made my day!!

About that cost comparison work publication that you mentioned: see here in a separate posting: forum.susana.org/164-financing-taxes-tar...stems?start=12#28301

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth

Many thanks for noticing this!

We will absolutely report results of the Mozambique study here on SuSanA, though it'll be a couple of months before we have stuff to report. This is being led by Ana Rita Ramos of Portugal-based consultancy Hidrozono.

Related to this, please see brief summary of findings of a recent study by Aquaya, also commissioned under the Urban Sanitation Research Initiative, looking at willingness of water utility customers to pay a pro-poor sanitation surcharge...

www.wsup.com/blog/are-water-utility-cust...-income-communities/

Please watch out for more detailed results of this research, and next steps, coming soon! We were really happy with this study: it demonstrated clear and substantial willingness to pay, and we're optimistic that this is going to lead to real change on the ground.

Also related to this is another piece of research starting soon, looking at a related model in Ghana: ring-fencing of a proportion of property tax to support slum sanitation. We're currently reviewing bids for this work, and would expect to put an introductory blog-post out within the next month.

Associated with this research around redistributive tax/cross-subsidy models, under the Urban Sanitation Research Initiative we're also doing work around the costs of urban sanitation solutions....

1) Literature review by Loic Daudey, now Most Read article (yay!) in the Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development: washdev.iwaponline.com/content/early/201.../22/washdev.2017.058

2) Recently commenced project on costs versus WTP, led by Aquaya... www.wsup.com/blog/mind-the-gap/

So under the Urban Sanitation Research Initiative, we are doing and will be doing a body of work around what high-quality slum solutions really cost; how much of this cost slumdwellers can reasonably be expected to pay; what therefore the financing gap is; and how this gap can potentially be covered by mechanisms including sanitation surcharges, ring-fenced components of specific taxes, and general allocations from municipal and national general budgets. We're striving hard to ensure that all this research that doesn't just produce nice academic journal publications, but also has real influence on policy. But hey, that's going to take a bit of time!

We'll do our best to ensure that we put regular updates on SuSanA, which we know is the primary super-brilliant international knowledge hub for sanitation: so please keep up the great work!

Best regards - Guy

Dear Guy,
This sounds like a really interesting piece of work. Will you be able to publish it here on the forum when it's completed? We had talked about such surcharge models here on the forum before, I think it was part of the GIZ work in Uganda if I remember correctly. Seems to make a lot of sense to me (i.e. a surcharge on the water bill to subsidise sanitation).

Regards,
Elisabeth

This work, commissioned under WSUP’s Urban Sanitation Research Initiative , will be an analysis of experience to date with collection of the sanitation surcharge (taxa de saneamento) in the Mozambican cities of Quelimane and Beira. The primary aim of this work is to generate detailed information for CRA (the Mozambican water and sanitation services regulator), and for other relevant actors in the Mozambican WASH sector; most importantly, this will help CRA decide on regulatory approaches to this tariff in these Mozambican cities including Maputo. In addition, this work will generate international learning around the Mozambican experience to date, of interest in other countries that are implementing or considering similar surcharge models, including Kenya, Zambia and Ghana.

Maximum budget under this Call: GBP 30,000
Bids due: Before 23:59 (GMT+2) on Tuesday 28th November 2017
Location: Desk and Mozambique
Language: Portuguese