The key problem in most of the water and wastewater utilities is the absence of performance assessment tools. This research utilized the calculation of a group of financial and operational indicators for a sample size of 117 public sector utilities located in the USA, Egypt and developing countries. These indicators are then used to depict the performance of the Egyptian utilities as compared to the sampled utilities.
Practical application
: The results furnished by the group of the indicators included in the study relay the performance of the Egyptian utilities in comparison to the USA utilities and utilities in developing countries. The results also indicated the resemblance in some performance aspects between the water and water/wastewater utilities in Egypt and the remaining developing countries studied. On the face of it, a significant gap was noticed in most of the results between Egypt and the USA. As an example, the return on sales of Alexandria Water General Authority (AWGA) was less than that of the USA water utilities by 60%. Furthermore, the average tariff charged in the USA was higher than those charged in Egypt by 95% while the tariff charged across the developing countries exceeded the Egyptian tariff by 66%.
