In water and sanitation, the investments made by the social funds since the Peace Accords represented about two thirds of the total, with the remainder being supplied by the central government’s rural water program UNEPAR. The total value of UNEPAR’s investments in the years prior to the Peace Accords is not known, however they are unlikely to have been as high as those currently allocated by the social funds, and hence overall it seems likely that the volume of resources devoted to rural water and sanitation project has increased substantially.

# **3. Impact on Service Coverage**

# **3.1 The coverage situation**<sup>**13**</sup>

The current coverage situation in Guatemala, as portrayed by the ENCOVI survey, is summarized in Table 3.1. Sanitation (broadly defined to include latrines, septic tanks and sewerage) is the service with the highest level of coverage, followed by electricity, water, sewerage and telephony. The gaps between urban and rural coverage are lowest for sanitation, and highest for sewerage and telephony. Water and sanitation are those with the most egalitarian distribution, while sewerage and telephony are the least egalitarian.

**Table 3.1: Coverage of utilities (service by service)**

<u>(Proportion of households)</u>

||National|Bya|rea||By|quinti|le||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||Urban|Rural|1|2|3|4|5|
|Electricity|.73|.95|.56|.39|.64|.78|.90|.95|
|Water|.69|.88|.54|.50|.62|.63|.76|.92|
|Sanitation|.87|.97|.79|.73|.80|.88|.95|.98|
|Sewerage|.38|.76|.09|.06|.18|.32|.54|.81|
|Fixed telephone|.15|.31|.03|.003|.01|.03|.14|.58|
|Cellular telephone|.10|.18|.03|.001|.01|.03|.11|.34|
|Community public telephone|.64|.89|.44|.37|.53|.65|.79|.83|

No service = lack of all network services and latrine.

Network services = electricity, piped water in dwelling or field, telephone (fixed or cellular), and toilet connected to sewerage. _Source:_ World Bank calculations using the ENCOVI 2000, Instituto Nacional de Estadística - Guatemala While it is conventional to report separate statistics on the coverage of different services, in terms of understanding quality of life, it is informative to consider the combinations of utilities services that people have access to (Table 3.2). The results show that one in six Guatemalan households has no access to any modern network services (electricity, piped water, sewerage or telephony). In rural areas the proportion rises to almost one in three; while in the lowest consumption quintile it is as high as two in five. At the other end of the spectrum, one in six Guatemalan households has access to all four network services, with the ratio rising to one in three for urban areas.

It is interesting to question which is the first service to reach those Guatemalan households that only have access to one of the network services (Table 3.3). The statistics show that in about 60% of cases the only service available in the household is electricity, and in the other 40% of cases water. The greater prevalence of electricity services holds good for almost every sub-category of the population except for the poorest. Where only two services are available, they are invariably water and electricity, while households with only three services most typically have electricity, water and sewerage.

> 13 See Annex D for definitions of coverage, takeup, and availability.

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