Uganda: Country, Dar in World Bank Funding for Water Sector

Kampala — The World Bank has extended a US$3.2 million grant to a selected 12 districts programme in Uganda for better service delivery.

The project is expected to benefit some 45,000 people and will be implemented over the next two to three years.

The grant is also expected to provide capacity development to the ministry in relation to competitive tendering processes and monitoring and verification.

The selected district clients will then pay for only what has been tested and found working, essentially ensuring that private bidders have to first offer quality work to be selected.

Mr. Sottie Bomukama, the acting permanent secretary in the ministry of water explained that the grant is targeting the first 10 projects, four of them new. The new towns will have completely new water supply systems and will "start from scratch".

At a briefing held at the ministry head office in Luzira outside Kampala, Uganda's minister for water and environment, Ms. Maria Mutagamba called for more involvement of the private sector in the provision of water services. She called for vigilant monitoring of the funds describing the World Bank grant as "not small money."

PricewaterhouseCoopers was selected from a shortlist of six financial firms to provide its services as a fiduciary or monitoring agent.

The World Bank country manager, Ms. Grace Yabrudy said that the key to the project's success will be the private operators' ability to pre-finance the delivery of services; in some cases it may require borrowing from local commercial banks.

Yabrudy said the large investment required in the water sector cannot be recouped from the nation's poor through user fees.

Meanwhile, The World Bank Board of Directors has also approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit of $200million to support the Tanzania water sector.

According to a statement issued by the Bank's Dar es Salaam office last week, the amount is part of the total $700million that the Development Partners Group will contribute to the government's five-year Water Sector Development Programme.

Other development partners supporting the water utility programme financially are Germany, the Netherlands, France, Japan and US.

Others are the Millennium Challenge Corporation, UNDP, UNICEF, FAO and African Development Bank. The government will lead the process with its own contribution of $251 million.

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