Event Description
Financial mechanisms for sustainable development and integrated water and resource management need to be designed with care and their performance reviewed regularly.

What are the key issues with subsidies? Where, when and how do they impact?

Cases and indicators for success and failures in policy, planning, implementation, management and monitoring of financial and economic tools relevant to the sector need to be highlighted. What is the range of economic and financial instruments in the water and sanitation sector and their relative advantages and disadvantages? What are the risks, benefits, good and bad practices related to the design and implementation of subsidies?

How can subsidies be designed so that the cash flows are predictable and support "Sustainable Cost Recovery"?

How should subsidies be designed and implemented to guarantee necessary cash flows? Sustainable cost recovery based on transparent use of revenues from Tariffs, Taxes and Transfers (3Ts) implies a careful use of subsidies. How should these subsidy instruments be designed in conjunction with institutional reforms (including decentralisation) to catalyse innovative financing, such as community financing, franchising, private capital, bonds?

How can the potential adverse effects of subsidies be mitigated?

Adequate elaboration of indicators, evaluation and risk analyses for the successful planning, implementation, management and monitoring of financial and economic tools need to be developed and disseminated with their associated caveats.

When and where is it appropriate to provide benign subsidies?

An emphasis is needed on how, where and when to reduce "detrimental" subsidies and promote benign subsidies and incentives. What methods and engagements should be used for financing and implementing subsidies? What examples from recent decades are considered to have functioned? How can those that have failed be phased out?

Programme

Chair: Mr. Sanjay Wijesekera, DfID
Co-chair:  Ms. Monica Scatasta, EIB
Commentator: Mr. Glenn Pearce-Oroz, WSP, World Bank
Rapporteur: Dr. Husamuddin Ahmadzai, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
Co-rapporteur: Prof. Paul Appasamy, Karunya University, India