COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s water board has agreed to undertake several targets in line with IMF and Finance Ministry requirements over implementing KPIs for the sector. Operational profitability and cash flow generation of the water board declined in the last couple of years due to the lack of cost effective tariff mechanisms.
The board however has recorded 1,030 million profit for the year 2015. Now, the water board has submitted several targets. The water board plans to increase new water connections at a rate between 100,000 to 150,000 per annum while reducing total staff per thousand connections from 5.6 to 3.9 by 2019. It also expects to reduce non-revenue water percentage from 27.3 percent to 26 percent at the end of 2019 and increase access to safe drinking water percentage from 87.3 to 89.8 by 2019. The board plans to improve operational efficiency and thereby reduce leak repairs cost per kilometer per month from 590 rupees to 478 rupees. Above targets however based on the following assumptions. Tariff will be increased by 35 percent in every 3 years and Treasury will provide VAT and duty concessions for all new projects committed after 02/05/2016.
Treasury will provide 75 percent of debt services while water bard has to bear 25 percent. (both rural and urban water supply projects.) The requirement of local component of the foreign funded projects will also be allocated by the treasury or to provide balance amount of 60 billion rupees bond to facilitate this requirement. The pipe born water coverage is nearly 44 percent through 329 water schemes operated by water board expects to increase this to 60 percent by 2020.
