The government has commited to basic water and sanitation for all by 2017, just 29 months from now. The National Management Information Project 2014 reports that 84 percent of the population has access to water and 70 percent to sanitation. This means 4.7 million and 8.4 million people still do not have access to basic water and sanitation respectively. Only 25 percent of the existing water supply schemes are well functioning, 36 percent need minor repair, nine percent need major repair, 20 percent need rehabilitation, and another nine percent need reconstruction.Government has allocated 16.6 billion rupees (two percent) to water and sanitation for the FY 2015/16 against the total budget 819 billion rupees. The allocation is equivalent to 0.8 percent of the national GDP of 2014. Out of the total budget, approximately 5 billion rupees (29 percent) is allocated to Melamchi project, 8 billion rupees (46 percent) to District Programs/Projects and the rest 4.2 billion rupees (25 percent) to other projects. According to a World Bank study on "Reducing Poverty by Closing South Asia's Infrastructure Gap", Nepal needs to invest at least 1.5 percent of its GDP every year to meet water and sanitation demands.
As District Programs have the leverage of increasing water and sanitation coverages especially for hard to reach communities, there is need to concentrate funding in District Programs. There has been an increasing trend of allocating funds to the District Programs for the last three years. It shows the sensitivity of the government to its commitment. However, the allocation is still lower than estimated actual requirements. Twenty-seven billion rupees (13.5 billion rupees per year) is required to ensure access of the remaining 17 percent population in water and 30 percent population in sanitation within two fiscal years: 2015/16 and 2016/17.
It is also interesting that District Programs are in better positions to utilize (95 percent) allocated budget compare to Melamchi (45 percent) and Other Projects (73 percent), but the coverage, especially of water has not been increased as per the expenditure. Water coverage increased by only 3.2 percent serving 0.9 million population in four years (80.4 percent in 2010 to 83.6 percent in 2014) with the expenditure of 17.7 billion rupees on District Programs.
The recent earthquake has put additional financial burden and risk to the sector in meeting the national commitment. According to the Post Disaster Needs Assessment report, the total needs for recovery and reconstruction of infrastructure and physical assets related to water and sanitation is estimated at 18.1 billion rupees, of which 25 percent (2.8 billion rupees) is needed for FY 2015-16, 40 percent for FY 2016-17 and 35 percent for FY 2017-18. The government has allocated a total of 74 billion rupees in National Reconstruction Fund this year for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the damages caused by the earthquake. The modality of the expenditure of this fund is yet to be clear.
Nepal has made three financing specific commitments at the Sanitation and Water for All, High Level Meeting (SWA HLM) 2014 to remove barriers to achieve universal access. The three commitments are: i) Develop financing strategy highlighting sector financing needs, gap and possible ways to secure additional resources, both from internal and external sources, ii) Prepare appropriate investment plan for various aspects of WASH with priorities, and iii) Call donors and international community for increased financial assistance and technical support.
A huge funding shortfall to the District Programs and missing link between expenditure and coverage of these programs have placed the 'universal coverage of water and sanitation by 2017' at high risk. If the situation continues, meeting the national targets, especially on water coverage almost turns out to be uncertain. Therefore, it is pertinent to expediting actions towards the commitments made by the government at SWA HLM. Till then better targeting and utilization of the available resources to cover uncovered population is critical.
The author is a Researcher and Development Practicener in Water and Sanitation and holds Master's Degrees in Statistics and Anthropology
govindbdrs@gmail.com
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