Total of 230 million m3 of drinking water lost in Serbia in 2018 – RSD 10 billion down the drain

A total of 230 million m3 of drinkable water was lost in the water distribution system of Serbia in 2018, that is, more than 35% of the water produced did not reach its customers. The main reason is the age of the water supply infrastructure, Dusko Pejovic, the president of the State Audit Institution (DRI), said at the media conference where the report on the “Efficiency of Water Infrastructure Management” was presented.

According to him, Belgrade loses 33% water from the system annually, and if these losses were reduced to only 10%, it would save the amount of water used by a town the size of Subotica.

– The estimate is that over RSD 10 billion is lost annually in the income of companies which are in charge of water supply. The losses can be reduced through investments, by fixing the water supply infrastructure, which requires EUR 800 million, or by increasing the efficiency of water supply companies – Pejovic said.

The average age of the pipes in Nis, Prokuplje and Lazarevac is 40 years, whereas in Belgrade it is 33 years. The PE “Beogradski vodovod i kanalizacija” has a network 22% of which is 26 to 55 years old, whereas 400 km of the network is older than 55 years, it was said at the conference.

Nada Tosic, the head auditor at DRI, says that the auditing data show that more than a third of the water is lost annually from the public water supply systems in Serbia, whereas over 50% is lost within a fifth of the public water supply systems.

For the sake of comparison, the losses amount to 7% in Germany, 5% in the Netherlands and 8% in Denmark, whereas 20% is lost in Hungary, 27% in Slovenia and 38% in Romania.

The United Nations project that at least a fourth of people in the world will be affected to water shortages by 2050.

S. Petrovic

Državna revizorska institucija Republike Srbije

DRI

Duško Pejović

Nada Tošić

investments in water supply system

water losses in water supply systems

water supply systems

how old are water pipes