This Wednesday, 29/05, the National Congress analyzes MP 868, which facilitates the entry of private capital into the sector and introduces important changes to the regulatory framework for basic sanitation. Despite the advances made in recent decades, the country still has a large deficit in the sector, with almost half of the population without access to basic sanitation. To achieve universal service, the country needs investments in the order of R$ 20 billion per year, until 2033. Legal fragility, little coordination between government bodies and companies and the non-reuse of water as a sanitation strategy are some factors that contribute to a fragile basic sanitation policy.
Precarious basic sanitation harms the population's quality of life and also the country's economic development, as pointed out by the Economic Benefits of Basic Sanitation Study carried out by CEBDS and Instituto Trata Brasil. The lack of treated water, for example, leads to health problems, which in most cases are recurrent, in addition to causing people to be removed from their duties and generating public and private expenses to deal with these issues. The sanitation situation has an immediate impact on health indicators. The mortality rate of children up to 5 years of age was 16.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in Brazil in 2015. Although below the world average, the numbers are higher than the infant mortality rates in Cuba (5.5‰ ), Chile (8.1‰) or Costa Rica (9.7‰). Among its neighbors, Brazilian rates are also higher than those of Argentina (12.5‰) and Uruguay (10.1‰).
As for economic losses, workers more susceptible to diseases caused by lack of sanitation have poorer health and, consequently, worse performance, which affects their professional career and the income potential they could develop in the job market; Health problems also cause children and young people to withdraw from their school activities, which ends up harming their educational performance, damaging their future potential in the job market. A study by BRK Ambiental and Instituto Trata Brasil directly linked the lack of basic sanitation with lower earnings for Brazilian women. Universal sanitation would generate productivity gains and increase income, allowing more than 635,000 women to escape poverty. Speaking in numbers, the average increase in income over a year per Brazilian woman would be R$ 321.03, a total of R$ 12 billion per year in terms of income gain.
The importance of Public-Private Partnership (PPP)
The issue of sanitation, considered jointly between companies and governments, gives Brazil the possibility of fulfilling the objective defined in the National Basic Sanitation Plan (Plansab) of universalizing the service of access to drinking water, collection and treatment of sewage by 2033, something that It should only occur in 2060, according to the National Confederation of Industry. The direct consequence of this delay can be summarized as a worse quality of life, increased health spending and environmental and economic losses, such as reduced productivity and tourism gains.
The Provisional Measure (868/2018) emphasizes the need to public private partnerships to leverage basic sanitation actions and goals in Brazil. Highlights the rationality of the application of federal resources in the basic sanitation sector with the objective of leading to the universalization of services and the expansion of public and private investments in the sector; the reduction of regulatory risks, with a view to stimulating investments; the proposition of programs, projects and actions necessary to achieve the objectives and goals of the federal basic sanitation policy, with identification of financing sources, in order to expand public and private investments in the sector.
It is essential that there is a regulatory environment that promotes not only the supply of traditional services, but also favors the expansion of supply and the management of demand for reuse water, as an alternative to spending on water collection and treatment.
The sanitation MP proposes that sanitary sewage, consisting of the activities, provision and maintenance of infrastructure and operational facilities for collection, transport, treatment and adequate final disposal of sanitary sewage, from building connections to its final destination for production of reused water or its final release into the environment. The implementation of this proposal increases the competitiveness of the industry and reduces the demand for drinking water. This is because reuse can create business opportunities and be a vehicle for increasing private investment in the sector, mitigating competition for the use of drinking water and the association and consortia of smaller municipalities.
The importance of legal security in sanitation
A legal security It is an important issue to achieve the objective of expanding basic sanitation. According to the Provisional Measure, there is priority for legal security and adequate regulation as essential conditions for the development of the sanitation sector and establishes healthy conditions for competition between companies, strengthening the role of the Holder of these services, who now demand greater investments, better quality and lower prices for services provided to the population. With legal certainty, regulatory risks are reduced, which encourages public and private investments in the sector. Mandatory bidding for sanitation contracts, for example, brings greater legal security for private sector investments and contributes to the competitiveness of sanitation services.
With an environment that favors investment by companies in sanitation, with legal security, more private investments will be directed to the sector, which would give Brazil the possibility of getting closer to the proposed goals that aimed to reach the 2030s with services on the verge of universalization in the south, southeast and northeast regions, as well as significant improvements in the north and center-west regions.
