ABSTRACT
Privatisation of the water industry presents a combination of some of the most difficult questions and issues that have arisen to date in the government’s programme of privatisation of public sector services. The government’s first Discussion Papers on Privatisation came out during 1985. The original intention was that the privatisation would be pushed through at a fast pace in order to try to achieve the main legislation during 1986 and 1987, but it subsequently proved too technically and politically difficult a task. The chapter examines some of the implications of that approach of the government, and then to explore the issues concerned with the privatisation of the utility functions. The water industry privatisation cannot be about producing a competitive environment. One of the features of concern in the water industry privatisation is the emergence of a proliferation of regulatory agencies.
