Chapter 5 – Water, Sanitation, and Communal Services in Kyrgyzstan
“maximum affordable level” over a 20year period.
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In Kyrgyzstan, access to improved water sources since 2004 has increased, reaching 50-60 percent of the rural population due to the construction of new facilities (with funding from the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and other donors, via the Taza Suu programme). However, less than 25 percent of the rural population has access to improved sanitation facilities. For Kyrgyzstan’s 25 cities, coverage for drinking water varies from 60 to 90 percent, depending on the city; it is less than 40 percent for improved sanitation and solid waste collection. Regular municipal waste collection has declined drastically in most small and medium-sized towns. Only 39 towns and regional centres and 95 villages (29 percent of the total number of administrative and territorial units) offer regular municipal waste collection services. Despite some improvements in rural households’ access to water and sanitation services in the last five years, the sector remains significantly under-funded. Finances need to be mobilized to address the obsolete conditions of urban infrastructure and old existing rural systems, as well as expand infrastructure in rural areas and in new urban settlements. On a national basis, household water tariffs rose 87 percent during 20072010, with Bishkek posting a 119 percent increase (i.e., more than doubling). Official household survey data indicate that relatively small shares of housheold expenditures are absorbed by communal services, even for poor households. However, the government has committed to increase water and sanitation tariffs to the
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The financial viability of many service providers is at stake due to tariffs set below cost-recovery levels coupled with high (35-45 percent) non-revenue water levels and inadequate institutional capacity. Prospects for meeting the investment needs for infrastructure rehabilitation, renewal and expansion from internal sources (e.g., by raising tariffs) are clouded by legal, regulatory, and political uncertainties, and by outdated commercial and managerial practices—particularly regarding billing and contracting—in the communal services sector.
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Because only 3-4 percent of households had water meters in 2010, there are no official data on average per capita residential water use. According to 2010 OECD data, real water consumption for households/domestic needs in Kyrgyzstan are 71.1 liters/capita/day; expert assessments of the average water consumption volumes in rural and urban areas fall into a range of 50125 liters/capita/day.
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With the municipalization of communal services, there is no national coordinating and regulatory body for tariff setting and communal service provision as a whole. Nor are national water supply, sanitation and waste management policies being promulgated for urban or rural settlements. There is also a lack of policy coordination between water sector and other related sectors, such as housing. Policies and programming in the water and sanitation sector are likewise not aligned with annual and medium-term budget processes.
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