Financial sustainability of pre-paid meters for service extension in Low Income Areas
Water Service provision to low-income areas (LIAs) requires alternative service modalities that enable water services extension and outreach whilst also ensuring financial sustainability of the water utility. Provision of adequate quantity and quality of water in LIAs has received increased attention, at political and uitility levels, in many countries of the world. This difficult task has been commonly addressed by installing pre-paid water meters.
By allowing an affordable up-front payment for water services, pre-paid meters contribute to the revenues and cash flows of water utilities, which in turn helps ensure their financial sustainability. However, water managers often face challenges in the design of financial plans to purchase, install, operate, and maintain such technologies.
To better understand the financial conditions for the implementation of a pre-paid meter program, we present here a financial model projecting cash flows for the utility management level. This toolkit consists of a financial model running on Excel and a User's Manual - aimed at guiding experienced and new water professionals through the decision-making process in the implementation of a pre-paid meter program.
