OSE made water modernization measurable enough to borrow cheaply

Uruguay's national water and sanitation company had improved since the 1980s, but still faced high non-revenue water, energy use and weak management capacity. Electricity was 13 percent of operating costs, and OSE needed to modernize without losing resilience.

The OSE Sustainable and Efficient Project paired physical upgrades with an operating dashboard. The World Bank team and OSE developed the Business Management Efficiency Index, tailored from utility-rating practice, to track progress toward corporate goals.

From 2013 to 2019, the project benefited 433,900 households, recovered 89.3 million cubic meters of water and saved nearly 26,250 MWh. OSE also implemented logistics, quality, asset-management and internal-communications systems.

The operational discipline helped OSE's credit story. In 2017 it issued 22-year local bonds worth about US$32 million without development-finance support, then improved its credit rating to A- in 2018.

Turn modernization into a scorecard

The index made soft management capacity concrete enough to manage and audit.

Efficiency work was linked to resilience works, so floods, energy and water losses were not separate silos.

Local-currency bonds reduced foreign-exchange risk and gave OSE longer-tenor funding.

The same utility that learned from peers also exported its own practices to other utilities.

A utility turnaround needs a management instrument, not just works. If efficiency is measured in the same language managers and financiers use, operating gains can become cheaper capital.

World Bank reporting said OSE still needed deeper asset and water-loss management, but the project left the utility with better risk routines, stronger creditworthiness and access to local capital markets for future investments.