Loughborough University
Browse

The impact of price increases on water station performance and inclusiveness in Ghana

Download (267.16 kB)
conference contribution
posted on 2018-11-16, 14:34 authored by Kimberly Worsham, Sandy Hwang, Edema Ojomo, Muneeza Iqbal, Charles Yeboah
Water utilities face the difficult challenge of balancing affordable water service provision and covering the costs of operation and maintenance (O&M) and sustainability reserves through water sales revenue - approximately 70% of all utilities globally do not fully cover costs with revenue. In April 2016, Safe Water Network (SWN) increased prices at 29 of its 35 Safe Water Stations in Ghana to adjust for increasing variable costs and high inflation. SWN analysed sales and consumer data before and after the price increase to understand the impact on financial viability and inclusiveness. Our analyses show a 12% reduction in consumer purchases overall in the 15 months following the increase, driven largely by decreased participation of low socio-economic status (SES) groups. However, evidence suggests that average monthly sales volumes are recovering to pre-price increase levels.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Published in

Transformation towards sustainable and resilient WASH services: Proceedings of the 41st WEDC International Conference

Pages

? - ? (7)

Citation

WORSHAM, K. ... et al., 2018. The impact of price increases on water station performance and inclusiveness in Ghana. IN: Shaw, R.J. (ed). Transformation towards sustainable and resilient WASH services: Proceedings of the 41st WEDC International Conference, Nakuru, Kenya, 9-13 July 2018, Paper 2983, 7 pp.

Publisher

© WEDC, Loughborough University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Language

  • en

Location

Nakuru, Kenya

Usage metrics

    WEDC 41st International Conference

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Keywords

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC