Irrigation Water Cost Recovery In Egypt

Combines and interprets results from a number of studies that were designed to help the Egyptian government formulate a rational approach to sharing the costs of water services among the beneficiaries-agriculture and other users-and government. Highlights lessons transferable to other countries.

Cost recovery from irrigation in almost all the countries presents a dismal picture. Low cost recovery coupled with declining government finances has led to the deterioration of both the quality of the built infrastructure and institutions managing and governing such infrastructure. This has created a vicious circle of low cost recovery, poor maintenance of infrastructure, inadequate and unreliable water supply, inefficient and corrupt institutions, and unwillingness of the farmers to pay. Breaking this vicious circle primarily requires identifying ways to improve availability of financial resources. Improving cost recovery from all users, including irrigators of the water, offers one of the most important avenues for raising financial resources. The present study examines some of the important issues that impinge on improving the cost recovery in canal irrigation, and assesses the feasibility of some of the efforts being made to improve cost recovery in irrigation to revitalize canal irrigation.

nadequate funding for maintenance of irrigation works and emerging shortages of water are prevalent. The use of water charges to generate resources for maintenance and to reduce demand is widely advocated. Examples from other utilities, and from the domestic/industrial sectors of water supply suggest the approach could be effective. In developing countries, the facilities required for measured and controlled delivery of irrigation are rarely in place, and would require a massive investment in physical, legal and administrative infrastructure. To be effective in curtailing demand, the marginal price of water must be significant. The price levels required to cover operation and maintenance (O&M) costs are too low to have a substantial impact on demand, much less to actually bring supply and demand into balance. On the other hand, the prices required to control demand are unlikely to be within the politically feasible range. Furthermore, water supplied is a proper measure of service in domestic and industrial uses. But in irrigation, and especially as the water resource itself becomes constrained, water consumption is the appropriate unit for water accounting. This is exceptionally difficult to measure. An alternative approach to cope with shortage would focus on assigning volumes to specific uses–effectively rationing water where demand exceeds supply. This approach has a number of potential benefits including simplicity, transparency, and the potential to tailor allocations specifically to hydrological situations, particularly where salinity is a problem. Data from Iran are presented to support these contentions.

Egyptian agriculture is uniquely dependent on water, with over 95 per cent of agricultural production originating from land irrigated by the Nile. The improvement of irrigation systems and better control over water by farmers is therefore crucial to the drive to raise productivity in the current ocntext of scarce water resources, rich but underutilized land and changes in the institutional environment of the economy after "liberalization". This text evaluates the ambitious state-of-the-art Irrigation Improvement Project (IIP) and should be of interest to all those concerned with issues of water and development in the Middle East.

This document presents an analysis of experience in irrigation water charging, drawn from published literature and a series of six case studies. These sources provide a broad spectrum of experience from less-developed to more-developed countries. The aim has been to make an assessment of the claims concerning irrigation water charging as a tool for cost recovery (achieving financial sustainability) and demand management (achieving resource sustainability).

Much hope has been vested in pricing as a means of helping to regulate and rationalize water management, notably in the irrigation sector. The pricing of water has often been applied universally, using general and ideological policies, and not considering regional environmental and economic differences. Almost 15 years after the emphasis laid at the Dublin and Rio conferences on treating water as an economic good, a comprehensive review of how such policies have helped manage water resources an irrigation use is necessary. The case-studies presented here offer a reassessment of current policies by evaluating their objectives and constraints and often demonstrating their failure by not considering the regional context. They will therefore contribute to avoiding costly and misplaced reforms and help design water policies that are based on a deeper understanding of the factors which eventually dictate their effectiveness.