Improving bill payment for water and sanitation services in Uganda.

Delivery of utilities services must be underlined by sufficient and stable revenue streams. While measures are being undertaken by utility service providers to ensure financial sustainability through improved billing services, customer arrears continue to present a challenge. For instance, Uganda’s water agency currently holds total arrears of about 56%. Given the impact of bill non-payment on the performance of utility services, the project will investigate the role of information provision in improving the payment for water and sanitation services. Second, it will test the effectiveness of various information treatments on customer arrears and bill non-payment. The project will be implemented under randomization of 40,000 customers where four primary outcome indicators will be assessed. The agency’s billing and payment data will be used to measure our outcomes of interest. This will be complemented with customer survey data. The findings are expected to highlight the pathways through which billing information provision to existing clients can result in improvement of bill payment, thus guaranteeing sustained revenue flows.