The Water, Wastewater and Water Management Thematic Group has made recommendations to fully corporatize Water Authority, review water tariff and existing legislation as a way forward.

Group Chair, Dr Salesh Kumar highlighted this while presenting the findings from their discussion at the 2023 National Economic Summit.

The current tariff rate charged to domestic and commercial customers is 15 cents per 1000 mega litres and this is the cheapest in the Pacific region.

“The team suggested that probably it’s time to review water tariff, review of existing legislation and policies. The team says that it’s time to fully corporatize Water Authority of Fiji , there are reasons for example there are stakeholders, there are donor agencies who want to fund or who want to work with Water Authority but they have that incomplete transition so access to finance is difficult.”

According to a paper prepared by the Water Authority, the extremely low tariff means that, for the last six years, WAF has only been able to meet 50 percent of its operational costs.

It says this impacts the WAF’s ability to be a commercial statutory body, and necessitates relying heavily on government funding both for operational and capital expenditures.

[Source: Westernport water]

It says the irony of the current tariff is that the more water the WAF supplies, the more loss it makes because cost of supply is higher than sale price.

In addition to the low tariff cost, WAF also provides free water to households with an annual household income of less than $30,000 for up to 92,500 litres of water per year through the Free Water Allowance scheme.

As of December 2022, 151,470 people benefitted from the scheme.

It says there is an urgent need to review the WAF financial model to ensure the national utility is financially viable and thus able to provide water and sanitation services to all Fijians.