Governments advised to consider Regional Water Investment Facility

Consultant with Coles Engineering Group, Jans Janssens.

Caribbean governments are being advised to look into building new opportunities for financing projects aimed at the improvement of water supply.

Consultant with Coles Engineering Group, Jans Janssens, spoke on the creation of a Regional Water Investment Facility for this purpose.

He outlined that this would help utilities to make  the investments in the water sector, especially those utilities that are at the margin of bank abilities which do not yet have the access to commercial finance because today it would not only be public finance or commercial finance, it will be hybrid grand commercial and public and such a facility can help bridge the gap you have to go in that direction,” he said.

Some of the participants at the workshop.

As he spoke on ‘Water Sector Opportunities in Region’ on the first of a two-day workshop Regional Sector Assessment Workshop at the Caribbean Development Bank conference room on Monday morning in Barbados, Janssens told those specialists gathered that they should also look into developing a Regional Investment Portfolio targeted on non-revenue water.

Janssens remarked that it was unacceptable that non-revenue water was at the rate of between 17 to 66 percent in regional countries.

Noting that desalination was now having a heavier presence in the region, he suggested that it may be necessary to look into reducing the energy consumption utilized by such plants, while pointing out such a facility in one country, which is run completely by solar energy.

“You may even have to bring in the public sector in these kinds of arrangements to operate the pumping stations and pay it back by the savings in energy,” Janssens added. (JMB)