In many places in developing countries, water vendors are an important group of stakeholders, so we need to understand their business. How much water they are selling, the prices they charge, where they operate, and the profits they make. Millions of households in developing countries obtain at least a portion of their water supply from vendors. Most water vendors operate as private businesses or individuals, but some work for public agencies. Water vending is often illegal, but regulations against vending are typically not enforced. There are two basic types of water vendors. The first, I call distributing vendors. They deliver directly to the customers, both households and firms. From a household's perspective, water vendors that deliver water to one's doorsteps save the household the time spent collecting water. Households also receive the convenience of having water delivered to their home. And the water might even be better quality than the water they would obtain elsewhere. Distributing vendors use several methods to carry water. Some use carts that can be pulled by humans or animals. Some distributing vendors carry water on bicycles. Some just balance containers on poles. Tanker trucks can also be used to deliver larger quantities of water. The second type of water vendor I call retail vendors. Households walk to the place where retail vendors sell water and then carry it home themselves. Next I'm going to show you some photographs of water vendors from different parts of the world. This photo shows distributing vendors in a Ukunda, Kenya. Vendors are typically young unskilled men. Pushing these carts is hard work. One liter jerry can weighs 20 kilograms. So, the water on these carts weighs 240 kilograms, not including the weight of the cart itself. This next slide shows a vendor in Semarang, Indonesia. This is the same system, a hand-drawn cart on pneumatic tires with 12 20 liter jerry cans. The price was about the same as in Acunda, about 10 cents per jerry can. These vendors typically earn about the daily wage of an unskilled laborer. This next slide shows a tanker truck in Onitsha Nigeria, filling up at a bore hole. And this next slide shows a retail vendor in Onitsha, Nigeria. This household is collecting rainwater in this metal container, and then sells water by the jerry can to other households. Why don't other households just install a rainwater collection system themselves? There are many reasons. A household may be renting the flat, and not have the right to build or install metal tank like this. Or they may just simply not have the money to purchase a metal storage tank. Typically, water vendors are unregulated, and prices are set in competitive markets. But sometimes vendors are organized and exert power on prices. Organized vending systems are more likely to oppose policy interventions to improve water supply infrastructure than unorganized vendors. Retail vendors typically charge a few US cents per 20-liter jerrican. U.S. $0.03-0.05 per jerrican would be a typical price in many places. Distributing vendors using carts typically charge considerably more than this, because they incur the labor cost of delivering water to the household. $0.10 U.S. per 20 liter jerrican would be a typical price. So suppose a household has five members and each member used 20 liters per day. If the household obtained all its water from distributing vendors, it might spend $0.50 U.S. per day or $15 per month on vended water. For many poor households this will be too much, but they might purchase some of their water from distributing vendors. Like I said, distributing vendors also use tanker trucks. On a per unit basis tanker trucks typically charge less than distributing vendors, but the minimum quantity sold by a tanker truck is higher. Typical price for delivery of 2-5 cubic meters would be on the order of $10-20 U.S.. This table shows some prices that water vendors have charged in a few places I've been. Prices do vary, and are a function of the distance water vendors have to travel from the water source to the household, gasoline prices for tanker trucks and local wages. This slide shows monthly household expenditures on water from the LSMS data that we saw in our videos on coverage statistics. On a monthly basis, households using vendors sometimes pay more than they would for piped water, as in Pakistan. But not always, as in Ghana and Nicaragua. But households purchasing water from vendors typically use much less water than households with private connections. Also, the water supplied by utilities is heavily subsidized, while vendor prices are not. This is the case with Pakistan in this table. To wrap up this discussion of water vending, millions of people in developing countries buy some of the water they use from vendors. But the majority of households in developing countries do not buy from water vendors, and those households that do use vendors typically buy small quantities. So suppose you're working on a water supply, working on a water supply problem, in a community in a developing country, and you discover there was no water vendors there. What would that mean? If there are no water vendors in the community, this probably means that the demand for vended water is lower than the price that water vendors would have to charge. If there's no market for vended water, households are probably too poor to pay for vended water, or already have good water supply options, or some combination of the two. In the next video we're going to look at more detailed water vending in one city, Onitsha, Nigeria as it existed in 1987. [BLANK_AUDIO]
