Water privatization in Guinea
Open-knowledge reference entry
Urban water supply in Guinea was privatized from 1989 until 2003 during the presidency of Lansana Conte. His government initiated water privatization for two reasons: First, the World Bank had made private sector participation in urban water supply a condition for a new credit, after the public water utility had been unable to improve service quality under a previous World Bank credit. Second, the government wanted to reduce the budgetary burden from the national public water utility, which was overstaffed and had been unable to collect bills.
In the five years after privatization, water tariffs quadrupled. The increase even exceeded the tariff increases that had originally been planned. This eased pressure on the government budget. Consumers also benefited when a bulk water pipeline and water treatment plant, both financed by the World Bank credit, were completed in 1994 resulting in improved service quality. But the tariff increase also imposed a burden on the minority of Guineans who were connected to a piped water supply system. Most of the poor in Guinea were not affected by water privatization, since they remained without access to a piped water supply system.
After the private sector contract expired in 2000 and an interim period, the sector reverted to public management.
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This entry incorporates text from “Water privatization in Guinea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.