The two-day national workshop “Economic and Financial Instruments for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)” sought to build awareness of the participants on economic and financial instruments which can be used for financing the water sector and to provide them with the information and tools needed to implement effective financing arrangements for water management in their country.
Cross-section of participants during their training at the Economic and Financial Instruments Workshop in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in St. Lucia.
Addressing stakeholders at an opening ceremony to kick-off the start of the workshop was Ms. Avril Alexander, Regional Coordinator of the GWP-C who highlighted to stakeholders that good water governance includes setting appropriate prices for water as well as investing in the development of the sector to improve the provision of water.
In her remarks to workshop participants, Ms. Alexander pointed out that in the Caribbean region, governments and utility companies often experience challenges in fulfilling the demand for water and making necessary infrastructural investments to improve and extend service. According to her “In many cases the utility company operates at a loss and does not even achieve cost-recovery due to inappropriate pricing mechanisms; ageing and outdated infrastructure is also a well-known feature of the water sector in many of our countries.”
Also speaking at the opening ceremony were Mr. Sylvester Clauzel, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology of St. Lucia; and Mr. Truscott Augustine, Chair of the National Water and Sewerage Commission (NWSC) who echoed Ms. Alexander’s sentiments and urged participants to value the training they would receive over the two-day period.
Cross-section of participants during working group sessions.
The training activity was facilitated by Mr. Glenn Khan, Deputy Executive Director of the Regulated Industries Commission of Trinidad and Tobago; a practitioner with over twenty (20) years of experience in conducting research on regional financial institutions. Mr. Khan led participants through a productive two-day period of learning. Participants were trained to identify feasible strategies for affordable financing of water and wastewater infrastructure; they learnt how to critically examine specific institutional and policy reforms that could enable increases of financial flows to the water sector; they learnt about the formulation of enabling mechanisms to finance development and maintenance works in the water sector; among other skills.
From an evaluation conducted after the workshop, participants expressed that the training was helpful and improved their understanding of water financing in the Caribbean region.
It was the first time that the GWP-C held its Water Financing workshop in St. Lucia. Other installments of the training have been carried out by the GWP-C in Grenada, St. Kitts and Suriname. GWP-C is committed to continuing its efforts to hold this workshop in other countries in the region.
GWP-C in recognising the challenges facing the water sector and the need for new and innovative methods to increase the financial sustainability of the water supplier, also saw the need to hold a meeting with the Board of Commissioners of the National Water and Sewerage Commission (NWSC) of St. Lucia the day before the Water Financing workshop on May 27th, 2013.
This meeting enabled GWP-C to have an intimate knowledge sharing session with these water stakeholders to provide them with an orientation on the operations and functions of a Commission based on the practice in Trinidad and Tobago. Through this meeting, GWP-C was also able to share with them background information on the work of the Partnership and how the organisation can support them in their efforts for better water resources management.