U.S., Japan To Partner with India on Water Supply, Sanitation
Initiative Announced in Mexico, March 20
 

March 22, 2006

New Delhi – The governments of India, the United States and Japan will work together to improve water and sanitation services in India. This was announced at the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City on Monday, March 20, 2006.

The agreement to collaborate with India is part of the world-wide “US-Japan Clean Water for People Initiative,” a joint endeavor to provide safe water and sanitation to the world’s poor. This global US-Japan partnership will accelerate international efforts to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the number of people who are unable to access safe drinking water or sanitation by the year 2015.

In India, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will work with the Indian Ministry of Urban Development (MOUD) to help provide safe water and sanitation to India’s poor.

USAID and JBIC have already started working as a team with Bangalore city authorities to provide water and sanitation services to the poor in over 100,000 households in 368 slum settlements. JBIC will provide financing to extend the infrastructure to the slums; USAID is providing policy and community organizing support. USAID and JBIC were joint sponsors of recently awarded grant from the multi-donor urban management facility, Cities Alliance, close to $.5 million to enable the NGO WaterAid to help Bangalore slum residents organize and empower them to make critical decisions, such as where to locate public water taps and community toilets and set charges for these services.

The US-Japan-India partnership is also working in the Greater Bangalore Metropolitan Area. Water and sanitation services will be provided to 1.5 million residents, 450,000 of which live in slums or are otherwise classified as poor. USAID provided a partial guarantee for a $23 million bond, adding enough security to allow eight smaller municipalities to go to the capital markets for their infrastructure needs for the very first time. The bond proceeds will be used to provide individual and community water connections and is matched by Indian government grant funds and household contributions. JBIC is providing a major $750 million + loan and technical assistance to bring water from the nearby Cauvery River to the Bangalore metro area.

MOUD, JBIC and USAID intend to expand their collaboration beyond the Bangalore area to improve water and sanitation services in other Indian cities. MOUD’s policy reform agenda and grant funds, along with JBIC’s concessional loans and project support and USAID’s technical assistance and loan guarantees create a powerful combination of resources.

Improvements in water and sanitation infrastructure can improve public health and raise overall living conditions for the growing number of urban poor in India. It will help to create new water supply, sewerage and solid waste disposal infrastructure and generate economic returns where rapid industrialization and urbanization have out-paced infrastructure development.