About 60 per cent of planned water and sanitation projects in Iraq have not been carried out since the 2003 US-led invasion, a US audit said on 26 January 2006. Only 49 of 136 planned water- and sanitation-related projects will be completed and only about 300 of 425 planned electricity-related projects, according to the report by Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The planners of the rebuilding effort did not take into account hundreds of millions of dollars in administrative costs, and mostly did not realise that the United States would have to spend money to keep things like power plants and sewage treatment plants running once they had been built, the report says. Water resources and sanitation took the biggest hit among the sectors, losing US$ 2.185 billion (EUR 1.834 billion), or 50.4 per cent of its original allocation, the audit found.

Source: World Bank Press review, 27 Jan 2006

Tags: emergencies