Financial health of private sector WASH businesses in rural Vietnam

By ChiQLe On 24 Oct, 2022 88

In 2022, WOBA’s research team carried out a review of financial health of private sector WASH businesses in rural Vietnam to better understand the common financial health risk factors that negatively impact the profitability and financial viability of WASH businesses. Prior studies have shown that financial viability risk factors in the public-private projects tend to relate to those that increase the project costs/cash outflow and decrease its return/cash inflow. The predominant risks originate from four major areas: construction cost, operation and maintenance cost, financing cost and operating revenue.

The rapid review provides private sector WASH suppliers and government partners with a map that assists them to know their responsibilities, their assigned risk factors, and thereby, the strategies that they should set out to execute more public-private subsidy-based projects for the public sector with a profitable satisfactory level for the private one. The results of the learning briefs provide insights for international and domestic investors and donors about prevalent financial risk factors for WASH businesses in rural Vietnam, and make recommendations for effective solutions to deal with these risks in pursuing inclusive WASH opportunities.

The two briefs are also available in Vietnamese.