Why Utilities Still Underinvest in Non-Revenue Water Reduction

For most water utilities, 20–40 % of the water they produce never earns a single riyal, dirham, or dollar. It disappears through leaks, meter errors, and unauthorised connections. The maths for fixing this is usually compelling: finding and repairing losses costs far less than the incremental cost of producing more water. And yet NRW reduction programmes are perennially underfunded. The reason is not ignorance. Most utility executives know their real-losses figure. The reason is institutional: water tariffs in the MENA region are typically below full cost recovery, and capital budgets are allocated to visible infrastructure (new plants, pipes, reservoirs) rather than the unglamorous work of leak detection, pressure management, and meter replacement. There are also political dimensions. Reducing apparent losses means cutting off unauthorised connections — a sensitive intervention in communities where informal water access has been tolerated for decades. Meter replacement programmes expose billing errors that utilities would prefer not to surface. **The international evidence is unambiguous.** The IWA's Global Water Leakage Summit (2023) documented 16 cases where NRW reduction investment returned 3–8× the capital outlay within five years — better than almost any supply-side investment. The challenge is not the business case. It is finding the internal champion willing to show that a third of the water is lost before it reaches a customer. Demand-side investment, including NRW programmes, deserves a ring-fenced budget line, independent of capital-project competition.