Major national programme to improve water utilities launched

More than 200 billion forints will be spent on water utility investments this year, including more than 100 billion forints for the reconstruction of the network, said the Minister of State for Water Utilities of the Ministry of Energy at a press conference in Budapest on Wednesday.    

V. Zsolt Németh stressed: in the past 10 years, some HUF 1,000 billion has been spent on the development of water utility systems in the country, but the maintenance and renewal of existing infrastructure has not received sufficient attention, so the next few years will be all about reconstruction.

As the first element of the national reconstruction programme, funding for planning will be provided to public utilities with the highest water losses in the network, the State Secretary said. He added that there are service providers with water losses approaching 50 percent.   

Zsolt V. Németh stressed that the integration programme was successfully completed last year, with 14 water utilities previously owned by the majority of municipalities joining the state-owned utilities.