Turkish minister says selling water is out of the question

"Water belongs to the state, and only we can make best use of the water," Veysel Eroglu told a press conference in Istanbul.

 

Eroglu said that it was the most important duty of the state to supply sufficient and good quality potable drinking water to all its citizens, adding that the comments that water would be sold and privatized were not accurate.

 

"What we aim is to involve the private sector in establishing hydroelectric power plants, and it is out of question to sell water," he was quoted as saying by Anatolian Agency.

 

The World Water Forum, a global conference, is held every three years to discuss how to conserve, manage and supply water, as the lack of clean water in many parts of the developing world and poor sanitation is a major cause of deadly disease.

 

The theme of the forum, that began on Monday and will end on March 22, is "Bridging Divides for Turkey". The forum was held in Morocco in 1997, the Netherlands in 2000, Japan in 2003 and Mexico in 2006.

WB WARNING
The global financial crisis could set back development in water utilities by a decade or more as investment falters and people become increasingly unable to afford water bills, the World Bank warned on Tuesday.
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As funding dries up a vicious circle could reemerge of poor services, low willingness to pay and low investment, said Jamal Saghir, director of Energy, Water and Transport at the World Bank, Reuters reported.
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Speaking in Istanbul at the forum, Saghir said water utilities worldwide would have to boost efficiency to convince cash-strapped governments they were a sound investment.
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In the meantime, new ventures were likely to be cancelled and existing water infrastructure projects could come under cost pressure, he said.
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More than 20,000 environmentalists, scientists, aid and utilities experts are discussing issues surrounding water, climate change and development with government ministers from around 120 countries at the forum.
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The conference has come under fire from some action groups for not stressing enough the basic human right to clean water.
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The United Nations Millennium Development Goals pledged at the start of this decade to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water.
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Almost 1 billion people have no access to safe water and 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation.
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Angel Gurria, Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), told the conference that national governments must revise how they fund water services, which is typically a mix of tariffs paid by users, tax revenues and in some countries aid transfers.

 

If the financial crisis makes it harder for developing countries to borrow they must find ways of gradually moving to a more tariff-based systems which also protects those least able to pay, he said.

 

In a report unveiled at the forum, the OECD said the financial crisis represented an opportunity to make water infrastructure more efficient thereby attracting new investment.