But neither the nightmare of bad journalism can stop the impressive development the private supplying of water is undergoing around the globe –especially in the poorest regions.

 

There are many areas where state doesn’t reach. It is precisely those remote places where misery has a hold on human settlements that the entrepreneur is able to go and bring quality water at a reasonable price. The President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, recently wrote about this in an article for the Wall Street Journal using Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras and Chile as examples. Many large cities in these countries also use private businessmen to meet their water needs. In Chile, the private system brings water to rural and urban areas. Between 1970 and 1994, the percentage of water to rural areas rose from 27 percent to 94 percent and in cities from 63 percent to 99 percent.    

 

The state, for its part, does the only thing it knows how to do. In the end, it is a machine redistributing income and property to itself and those who support it. An recent book, The Water Revolution, explains how “in the majority of poor countries, governments perpetuate water shortages. They do not provide water to the poor, but offer massive subsidies for the use of water on established interests, like those of the large estate owners” in India and Ecuador, among others. The government moves water to where its interests lie. For example, “in urban India and Africa, the government simply does not provide water to the periphery because it does not recognize it as legitimate. So, local entrepreneurs provide water and sanitary services to the community, earning a profit.”   

 

Not only does private initiative bring water to where the state does not want or is unable to do so, but it does it much better. In Argentina, infant mortality fell dramatically after the privatization of 30 percent of the water system, especially (26 percent) in the poorest areas. If entrepreneurs are able to do business selling to the poorest of the poor, how is it that there are people who keep defending that entrepreneurs shouldn’t supply water in advanced societies like our own? For this and other reasons, we need to privatize water in Spain.