In February 1997, the Bank issued the Guidelines for the Economic Analysis of Projects for projects in all sectors, and subsequently issued the Guidelines for the Economic Analysis of Water Supply Projects” (March 1998) which focuses on the water supply sector. The treatment of subsidies and a framework for subsidy policies is contained in the Bank Criteria for Subsidies (September 1996). This Handbook is an attempt to translate the provisions of the water supply guidelines into a practical and self-explanatory work with numerous illustrations and numerical calculations for the use of all involved in planning, designing, appraising and evaluating WSPs.
In this document, short illustrations have been used to explain various concepts of economic analyses. Subsequently, they are applied in real project situations which have been taken from earlier Bank-financed and other WSPs, or from case studies conducted in different countries in Asia as part of a Bank-financed Regional Technical Assistance Project (RETA).