Reducing Non-Revenue Water Could Provide MENA With New Water

Half the problem lies not in the pipes but in the ledger.

The technical term is non-revenue water, and the distinction it makes is more important than it may sound. Non-revenue water is not the same as leakage. It is the difference between the volume of water a utility puts into its network and the volume it bills to customers. The losses divide into two different problems, each requiring a different solution.

Real losses are physical. Water escapes through cracked mains, corroded service connections, failed joints and overflowing reservoirs. Most of the water lost this way comes from leaks that never rise to the surface. A service pipe that is leaking into gravel beneath a road can continue doing so for years without anyone above ground noticing. This is the part that engineers can address with valves, sensors and excavators.

Apparent losses are commercial. The water reaches somebody’s tap, but the money does not reach the utility. Meters under-register, especially at low flows and as they age. Some connections have no meter at all. Bills may be estimated, mis-read or assigned to the wrong account; bills that are issued but not collected are a separate collection issue. Replacing pipes cannot solve any of these problems.

The first task is to identify the split between physical and commercial losses, because the two failures cost very different amounts to fix. A utility that spends a hundred million dollars replacing mains when two-thirds of its losses are commercial will recover very little water. The International Water Association’s water balance, the framework described below, exists to prevent that mistake. World Bank guidance treats it as the starting point for any loss-reduction strategy.

At three in the morning, most of the water still flowing is leakage.

A straightforward method of measuring leakage in a district relies on readings taken at night, when most residents are asleep. The utility takes a defined section of the network (in UK cities typically 500 to 3,000 properties, according to IWA guidance) and closes valves on its boundary so that all water enters through metered inlets, often just one. This is a district metered area, a core technique of modern leakage control. Flow meters on the inlets record continuously. The utility then examines the reading at three in the morning.

At three in the morning, almost nobody is using water. Legitimate night-time consumption in a residential district is small and reasonably predictable: some toilet use, a small number of night-shift workers and some commercial premises. If the meter shows that 26 cubic metres an hour are still flowing into the district, while legitimate night-time demand is 8, the remaining 18 are leaking into the ground. Leakage continues during the day, unlike demand. If that rate held all day it would come to about 158,000 cubic metres a year. In practice leakage falls as daytime pressure falls, so utilities convert the night figure with a night-day factor rather than multiplying by 24.

Minimum night flow shows how much water a district is losing. It does not show where the leak is. Locating the leak is a separate problem, and the past decade has changed how utilities tackle it.

Before any excavation, there is the valve.

Before anyone digs, pressure management offers a relatively cheap intervention that World Bank guidance calls an often underestimated option. Leakage is a function of pressure. Increasing the pressure makes every existing hole pass more water, and some leak paths, such as splits in plastic pipe, also open wider under load. For a fixed hole, flow rises only with the square root of pressure. Real networks are usually much more sensitive than that, which is why practitioners use the leakage exponent rather than a simple ratio. In practical terms, cutting excess pressure by a third can cut leakage by rather more than a third.

Many networks are over-pressurised for much of the day. They are designed for the morning peak and for the highest point in the zone. At two in the morning, at the bottom of the hill, the pipes can therefore be carrying far more pressure, or head, than anyone needs. A pressure-reducing valve with a controller that lowers the setting overnight addresses that. It also reduces bursts. UK data show mains burst frequency rising rapidly once pressure exceeds about 35 to 40 metres of head.

Desalination is the published benchmark at the top of that ladder. Dubai’s Hassyan plant set a record tariff of US$0.277 a cubic metre in 2020, but that bid was never built at that price: the 180 MIGD plant DEWA contracted in October 2023 is priced at US$0.365. World Bank data put typical seawater plant costs at roughly US$1 to US$1.40, depending on the sea.

Dubai reported 4.4% losses in 2025. The MENA region’s conditions are not the obstacle.

Comparing utilities on non-revenue water is more difficult than it appears. Countries measure it differently, publish it selectively and report it as a percentage. That measure flatters any utility whose customers use a lot of water, because the denominator is larger. For physical losses, practitioners therefore prefer litres per connection per day, read with supply time and pressure. The percentages still show something real, however, because the differences between them are far too wide to be explained by definitions alone.

Two things stand out. The first is that the Gulf has already shown that low losses are possible in the climate of the MENA region. DEWA reported losses of 4.4% in 2025. Qatar’s utility, Kahramaa, said in May 2026 that technical losses in its network remain below 4.5%; the country’s official statistics put real losses at 6% and total losses at 19% in 2023. Low loss rates are achievable in the region.

The second is that, outside the Gulf, some of the most water-scarce countries also report the highest losses. The reasons are the subject of the next chapter.

Phnom Penh reduced its losses from 72% to 6%, and pipe replacement was only part of the reform.

The most instructive counter-example lies outside the MENA region. In 1993, the water utility of Phnom Penh was losing 72% of what it produced, reached only a fifth of the city, supplied water for about ten hours a day and barely covered half its operating costs. Fifteen years later, it was losing 6%, covering 90% of its area around the clock, collecting on 99.9% of its bills and charging tariffs set for full cost recovery. Losses have since settled at about 8.75% (2023).

In the Asian Development Bank’s account, the first change was to management. Corrupt staff, including employees who installed connections illegally, were removed. A 1994 survey found 13,722 connections missing from the utility’s records, allowing the records to be corrected. Every connection was metered. A 1996 decree gave the utility administrative and financial autonomy, so that the additional revenue stayed in the network. Pipe replacement ran alongside these reforms, from 1993 to 2001.

• 1993

  The starting point

  The utility loses 72% of what it produces, reaches a fifth of the city, supplies water about ten hours a day and covers barely half its operating costs.

• 1994

  Correcting the records

  A survey finds 13,722 connections missing from the utility’s records. Staff who had installed connections illegally are removed.

• 1996

  Autonomy

  A decree gives the utility administrative and financial autonomy, so that revenue it raises stays in the network.

• 2008

  The result

  Losses are down to 6%, coverage is 90% of the city around the clock, collection runs at 99.9%, and tariffs are set for full cost recovery.

• since

  Sustaining the gains

  Losses were about 8.75% in 2023, which is what maintaining the position looks like.

For the MENA region, the potential gain is straightforward to estimate. Domestic water withdrawals across the Arab states alone came to about 31 billion cubic metres in 2022. If losses on that water averaged around 40% and were brought down to 25%, which is Jordan’s own 2040 target rather than an unrealistic assumption, the change would free on the order of four to five billion cubic metres a year. That is more than a quarter of the region’s installed desalination capacity of about 45 million cubic metres a day, and it would require no new intake, no new membrane, no new power station and no additional brine returned to the Gulf.

It would, however, require utilities to be allowed to charge something closer to what water costs, keep the proceeds, and meter and bill customers they currently do not. Those are political decisions rather than engineering decisions, and none of the region’s utilities can take them alone. Until those decisions are taken, the region will continue to buy its next cubic metre from the sea while treated water already in its pipes leaks beneath its streets.