Behavioral Interventions to Encourage Timely Payment and Prevent Debt Accumulation in Water Services (IADB-UR-T1387)

Countries
  • Uruguay
Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.
Specific Location
uninformed
Whenever identified, the area within countries where the impacts of the investment may be experienced. Exact locations of projects may not be identified fully or at all in project documents. Please review updated project documents and community-led assessments.
Financial Institutions
  • Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)
International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.
Project Status
Proposed
Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.
Bank Risk Rating
U
Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."
Borrower
Goverment of Uruguai
A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.
Sectors
  • Finance
  • Technical Cooperation
The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.
Investment Type(s)
Advisory Services
The categories of the bank investment: loan, grant, guarantee, technical assistance, advisory services, equity and fund.
Investment Amount (USD)
$ 0.18 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Project Cost (USD)
$ 0.18 million
Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.
Primary Source

Original disclosure @ IADB website

Updated in EWS Oct 8, 2026

Contribute Information
Can you contribute information about this project?
Contact the EWS Team

Project Description
If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.

The TC aims to design, implement, and rigorously evaluate low-cost behavioral interventions to reduce delinquency in paying residential water bills, accelerate debt regularization, and improve users' understanding of the tariff structure. The proposal addresses a problem relevant to the provider's financial sustainability: approximately 13% of bimonthly residential billings are not paid on time, and accumulated arrears exceed US$140 million, limiting OSE's operating, maintenance, and investment capacity, particularly for climate-resilient infrastructure. The Bank's added value consists of combining sector experience in water and sanitation with specialized capacities in behavioral economics and impact evaluation. The TC will generate the first rigorous evidence in Latin America on behavioral interventions to improve payment compliance in water services, through a randomized controlled trial comparing redesigned notifications and SMS/WhatsApp reminders, as well as their complementarity. The TC is linked to operations UR-L1207 and UR-T1349, aimed at strengthening water resource management, service quality, and reducing drinking water losses, and to operation UR-L1213, currently in preparation, which includes actions to reduce commercial losses in the Costa de Oro region. It also contributes to the IDB Group's Country Strategy with Uruguay by strengthening public resource management, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion through more sustainable, affordable, and resilient water services.

Investment Description
Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.

Contact Information
This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.

IDB 

 

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

You can submit a request for information disclosure at: 

https://www.iadb.org/en/access-information/information-request.

 

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF IDB / IDB INVEST

The Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (MICI) is the independent complaint mechanism and fact-finding body for people who have been or are likely to be adversely affected by an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) or Inter-American Investment Corporation (IDB Invest)-funded project. If you submit a complaint to MICI, they may assist you in addressing the problems you raised through a dispute-resolution process with those implementing the project and/or through an investigation to assess whether the IDB or IDB Invest is following its own policies for preventing or mitigating harm to people or the environment.  You can submit a complaint by sending an email to MICI@iadb.org.  You can learn more about the MICI and how to file a complaint at http://www.iadb.org/en/mici/mici,1752.html (in English) or http://www.iadb.org/es/mici/mici,1752.html (Spanish). 

How it works

How it works