The performance of water utilities in Jordan

摘要

This paper aims to measure the relative performance of Jordan’s water utilities for waternsector (WS) and wastewater sector (WWS), and to investigate the major factors behind theirninefficiencies. DEA (non-parametric method) and Tobit model (parametric method) were used atntwo stages. At the first stage DEA was used to evaluate the utilities’ efficiency and to investigatenthe utilities’ scale effect on efficiency. At the second stage Tobit model (regression) is appliednto determine the impact of the non-controllable factors on utilities’ inefficiencies where thenefficiency score is the dependent variable in the regression. The results of DEA showed thatnthere is a potential to reduce inputs level: water supply and operational expense (OPEX) for WS,nand treated wastewater and OPEX for WWS, by around 15–20 and 23–27%, respectively.nAqaba and Jarash utilities are the most efficient utilities in the WS, while it is Amman utilitynin the WWS. The utility size has relatively moderate effect on the relative performance. It isnconcluded that the medium utility size for WS and large utility size for WWS is the mostnappropriate. Tobit model results indicate that commercialization activities have a clearnpositive impact on efficiency improvement for both sectors.