Date

4-2009

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Economics

College

College of Economics and Management (CEM)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Amelia L. Bello

Abstract

This study was conducted to analyze the impacts of transferring ownership of a water district, from quasi public to pure public, to consumers, government and the enterprise itself. Performance of the utilities was analyzed using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set by the National Water Resource Board. Regardless of the government’s involvement in financial transactions of the utility, the indicators showed that pure public was more efficient than quasi-public. Yet, in reality, the reason behind the pure public’s better ratio of indicators is because the local municipality is subsidizing almost all the utility’s expenditures. Secondary data gathered from the budget department of the municipality, regarding government’s contributions on capital and subsidies in operating expenses and maintenance of the pure public, showed that the current ownership had incurred larger losses on the part of the government. Nevertheless, opportunity cost of these contributions must be analyzed for future studies for a more profound analysis of the fiscal effects. On the side of consumers, benefits were analyzed in terms of consumer surplus (CS), which is the most common measurement of welfare. Water was assumed as a private good, to be able to compute the surplus. Estimation of demand for water was conducted as a preliminary computation for consumer surplus. Change in CS was conducted in terms of changes in water tariffs. Since the demand estimation generated the expected signs of coefficients for variables, a decrease in water rates increases the CS, while an increase in water tariff decreased the consumer surplus as well as creates a dead weight loss. For that reason, since the transfer of ownership had increased the water rates, analysis of the CS shows that consumers also bear the weight of losses. In general, the study showed that the pure public generated larger losses after the transferring of ownership, on government and consumer’s part.

Language

English

Call Number

LG 993.5 2019 E2 M44

Document Type

Thesis

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