The study is one of the support activities that Water Group will provide to the housing sector, in order to help the government achieve its goals for SDG 6 and the NDC.

The second virtual meeting of this year’s International Cooperation Water Group was held on 10 June. Its technical secretariat is chaired by the Swiss Confederation through its cooperation agencies, SECO and SDC.

Members discussed the activities of each of the international cooperation agencies included in their commitments and support to the Peruvian government’s housing sector during the health emergency. They presented the scope of the Water Group consultancy to the Ministry of Housing, Construction and Sanitation. The Pan American Health Organization shared the results of the regional TrackFin pilot cases of Cusco and Ica.

Indicator Matrix

The Water Group focused on the development of the Indicator Matrix, as the ministry has been working on several complementary issues together with the cooperation agencies, and it expects to complement and support the National Sanitation Department’s lead to develop the New National Plan.

Fernando Laca, expert consultant in Water and Sanitation Services presented the consultancy’s scope. He indicated that it aims to build an indicator matrix for the new national and regional planning process 2021-2025. The consultancy will identify and recognize the indicators currently used for the National Sanitation Plan and its information sources. It will use this data, to build a matrix of indicators that reflects the sector’s gaps in rural and urban water and sanitation. It will coordinate permanently with the National Sanitation Department in order to align the study with sector objectives.

Laca said that the matrix is expected to identify gaps and types of gaps: «In urban areas in the EPS, there are gaps in infrastructure, operational management, commercial management, asset management and planning etc., which must be identified and monitored with indicators. In rural areas it will identify the gaps in sustainability, community support, institutional roots, etc., so that it serves as a basis for both the National Plan and the Regional Plans for 2025,» he said.

At the end of the presentation, the cooperation agencies agreed that these indicators should be geared to the SDG (especially 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3) and the NDC, to see how the goals can be incorporated to achieve the commitments Peru has made. They must make a thorough study of what is feasible to achieve in this next planning stage, aligning it with the MVCS Sanitation Department’s work, in order to achieve a national plan that corresponds to the goals set.

They also agreed on the importance of transcending and focusing on action beyond the emergency, and taking a medium- and long-term view, as the health crisis will bring with it structural problems nationwide in public investment and restrictions on public policy priorities in health and sanitation etc. Focusing on the new post-emergency context will be key for developing the initiatives to be implemented in the sector.

Regional TrackFin–Cusco and Ica pilots

Andrés Quispe, Pan American Health Organization consultant, presented the results of the study conducted in the Cusco and Ica regions at the request of the National Sanitation Department, for implementing the National Sanitation Plan, which has a region to government construction approach.

The World Health Organization methodology Trackfin helps to establish the financial flows among actors, providers and types of financing that occur in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. It aims to ascertain: i) the total and per capita expenditure in the WSH sector; ii) how the funds are distributed among the various services and types of expenditure, iii) who pays for the services and how much they amount to, and iv) which the main financing channels for the Water, Sanitation and Housing sector are.

He also indicated that the TrackFin model develops a matrix of descriptors and coding of the various levels of service in the W&S sector. It has been built on the basis of several of the models sources that include W&S interventions in different countries. «For example, this matrix will be produced in the interventions in Ica and Cusco, with the data about the financial resources that have been identified. We have the financing units, for example, ordered by users, authorities, providers, regulators, donors, NGOs, grassroots social organizations and financial institutions for repayable loans and so on. Each of these descriptors of type of use and/or expenditure in the sanitation sector are well specified in the TrackFin, and what we are looking for is to achieve a structure to have an X-ray of the financial flows in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector,» he concluded.

He finished his presentation by highlighting that this tool is valuable for discovering what is really happening in the W&S sector. It is also key for decision making, and hence its sustainability in the short and medium term must be ensured. The tool is key for strengthening the sector’s capacities for using this tool to ensure that it is replicated in other regions.

Swiss Cooperation proposed that the Water Group extend the period of the Technical Secretariat until December 2020 as the health emergency has made coordination and work flow difficult, and also in order to conduct the consultancy that will start soon. The member agencies agreed.

Finally, members agreed to schedule the next meeting and include the National Sanitation Department, to learn first-hand how they are progressing in the planning process of the national and regional plans; while continuing with the Indicator Matrix consultancy, so that the diagnostic of the indicators it has reviewed can be presented at the meeting.

For further information:
FS Water Group
FS Water Group – Road Map
PPT Indicator Matrix, Fernando Laca