Obstacles and Opportunities for Iran’s Wastewater Sector Development

Barriers to development of private sector investment in water and sewage industry

“…These problems impose a heavy burden on governments, such as (1) lack of incentive and innovation due to lack of personal interest; (2) the inability of companies to compete for their products due to high costs and weak management; (3) burdensome bureaucracy and administrative regulations that impede the dynamism, flexibility and timely decision-making in these companies; (4) the inability of government to effectively monitor their financial performance; and (5) increasing the efficiency and performance of the economic system of a country (Valipour et al , 2015). Therefore, privatization increases competition and encourages private investors to make a greater investment to increase efficiency (Mohajeri and Dierich, 2017). However, an adverse macroeconomic and regulatory environment reduces the benefits of privatization (National Research Council, 2002).…”

“…According to Luijecdijk and Arriens (2009), the lack of proper knowledge of the locality is a barrier to the privatization of water services. In addition, the public belief that water and sewage disposal is a human right that the government is responsible to provide (Bos et al , 2016; Mohajeri and Dierich, 2017), as well as the low level of investor confidence (Calabrese, 2008) are the obstacles for privatization.…”