Utility Benchmarking And Regulation In Developing Countries

Utility performance, especially in developing countries is still working toward the standard necessary to deliver best practice. This book examines performance monitoring and regulation as a prominent efficiency enhancement tool and clarifies many of the unknowns regarding the design and approach surrounding the area of utility management. Principles and practices are linked in a way that is informative and accessible, highlighting the challenges facing those who are trying to improve performance in the water sector. Operational settings are complex and unpredictable in developing countries due to inadequate infrastructure planning and this book makes clear which systems work best in these situations.

The book discusses performance monitoring in the critical areas of utility management that achieve sustainable performance goals:

• Performance development planning

• Modes of performance monitoring

• Provocative approaches to incentives creation

• Monitoring through high incentive plans

• Customer relations monitoring

• Pro-poor oriented monitoring

• Careful use of partial performance indicators

• Proposed indicators for assessing governance incentives

A case study on the National Water and Sewerage Corporation, Uganda is included in the book detailing the difficulties in discerning performance progress based on partial performance indicators. It underlines disparities in basing performance conclusions on partial performance indicators on one hand and aggregate analysis using modern benchmarking toolkits on the other.

This is an excellent handbook for utility monitors or regulators whose primary duty is to oversee performance management. It is a valuable resource for decision-makers, analysts, and policy-makers and can be used in capacity-building programs (both in-house and in universities) around the world.