18-07-2012

Senior Officials from the 43 country members of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) recently approved a project entitled “Overcoming governance challenges to the mobilisation of financing for the Mediterranean water sector”, aimed to identify and provide solutions to the lack of basic elements for a sound governance framework for the mobilisation of financing for the water sector in many Mediterranean countries, including absorption capacity at both national and local levels.

Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan, Albania and Palestine are participating in the first phase of this project with an overall budget of €2 million. The project has the financial support of the European Investment Bank. The promoters and the UfM Secretariat will mobilise other donors for the remaining financing needs.

The project, to run over three years, is promoted jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Global Water Partnership- Mediterranean (GWP-Med), and will build on earlier work jointly carried out by the GWP-Med and the OECD in Egypt (completed), Lebanon (completed) and Tunisia (in progress).

The project will focus on assessing the opportunities and institutional and regulatory challenges arising from public-private partnerships (PPPs) in water infrastructure, as a tool in the hand of policy makers to managing water resources and financing services in an effective, sustainable and affordable manner.  Stemming from the assessment, it will provide a diagnosis of the key governance and capacity building bottlenecks that impede the financing and of the mechanisms to overcome them, in the form of a set of operational guidance and a compendium of good practices.

These key analyses and common denominators will lead to the endorsement – even as pilot cases – of the mechanisms considered most suitable to the country context, through country policy dialogues, and using participatory approaches.

Source: EU info centr