Assessing the performance of urban water utilities in Mozambique using a water utility performance index

Abstract

Benchmarking analysis has become a strategic tool through which water regulators around the world measure the performance of water utilities. Since 2008, the Water Regulatory Council of Mozambique has been implementing a benchmarking framework to analyse the performance of urban water utilities. This paper develops a water utility performance index (WUPI) to analyse the performance of the regulated urban water supply utilities in Mozambique during 2010 and 2012. The WUPI is based on 12 key performance indicators grouped into 3 components (economic sustainability, operational sustainability and quality of the services). The WUPI was built in 6 different ways, using 2 weighting systems (equal weights and non-equal weights), and 3 different functional forms to aggregate the indicators (additive aggregation, hybrid aggregation and TOPSIS aggregation). The results obtained show that the performance of the water supply utilities in the analysed period has evolved positively. They also indicate that the performance level between the analysed water supply utilities is heterogeneous, with water supply utilities earning both high and low scores of the WUPI. Water utilities that were working through water operator partnership mechanics obtained higher performances in terms of the WUPI. This information should enable water supply utility managers and decision makers to prioritise activities and implement working models that allow for improvement of the performance of water supply utilities.