Does Size Matter? Operating Cost Coverage for Water Utilities

This paper compares the operational cost coverage index from 1132 water utilities for five countries (Albania, Brazil, Norway, Russia and Poland). The data used is available through the International Benchmarking Network (IBNET) for Water and Sanitation Utilities. By comparing means or medians of different serving population groups, it was shown that significant financial gains can be achieved by larger utilities. Such analysis can assist decision makers pursue merging of water utilities for profit maximizing purposes. The importance of benchmarking is also emphasized in order to illustrate the utility of the perused statistical analysis. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013