Sustainable Development and Economic Policy of Water in Tunisia Application of Panel Data

Abstract

The present article aims to evaluate the actual water policy management and to see if it's efficient either in macroeconomic level or in the regional one. Thus, the authors have recoursed, to a new set of explanatory variables to estimate an extended demand function in the short and long-run. Indeed, they have assumed that distributed volume of water is determined by the number of connections to Water supply network, the distribution performance, the linear loss index recorded in the distribution system, the evolution of the length of the water network and the water tariffs. The main results of this study are that, at the macroeconomic level, the price of water seems to be an efficient tool to waste reduction only in the long run. Consequently, the efficiency can be established only in the long-run. Indeed, the Tunisian consumer needs more of time to adjust its behavior to avoid all possible water waste. Nevertheless, the estimation of the said relation by region has shown that it exists, a large disparity and inequity between them.