SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Jordan is one of the most water stressed countries in the world. Thus, maximizing the efficiency with which the country supplies water is of paramount importance. However, the Jordanian water provision system has rarely been studied from an economic efficiency perspective. This thesis will address this gap in the literature, by appraising the impact of the corporatisation process on the efficiency of Jordanian water provision system. Jordan’s water provision system was entirely state-run until the late 1990s, but then a shift towards more corporate principles resulted in a mix of state-run and corporatised water providers. This thesis will study how the shift from purely state-run to mostly corporatised water provision has impacted water supply efficiency in Jordan. This will be done using three techniques: Data Envelopment Analysis, Difference-in-Difference Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Efficiency results vary considerably with each method used, and between water suppliers. While corporatised utilities do show high levels of efficiency, this is not uniform across corporatised suppliers. The state-run utility was also shown to be efficient, in relation to corporatised utilities. Finally, in order to analyse the differences in efficiency between corporatised suppliers, an analysis of their customer orientation was done. This analysis indicated that corporatised suppliers with greater customer orientation showed higher levels of efficiency than suppliers who were less customer oriented.