Market brief
Libya
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Libya, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for LibyaMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Libya: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.
Political stability
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Percentile among all countries; higher is more stable.
Investment climate
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Regulatory quality for private investment; higher is better.
Financing & PPP
- PPP frameworkLimited
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 0.9 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersSovereign budget, Reconstruction finance (prospective)
- Climate adaptation planIn preparation
Opportunities
- Coastal seawater desalination to relieve the aquifer
- Great Man-Made River rehabilitation
- Network reconstruction & leak reduction
- Wastewater treatment & reuse
Key challenges
- Dependence on the finite Nubian fossil aquifer (Great Man-Made River)
- Conflict-damaged infrastructure
- Coastal aquifer seawater intrusion
- Deferred maintenance
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT / national reports (latest available); World Bank 2023–24. Figures approximate. Governance indicators: World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (2024).
Contracting authorities
The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Libya. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- General Authority for Water Resources (GAWR)Ministry
- Ministry of AgricultureMinistry
- General Company for Water & WastewaterUtility
- Man-Made River Authority (GMMRA)Bulk producer
How deals are structured
The framework in Libya is Limited, the schemes we track carry US$ 0.9 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are Sovereign budget, Reconstruction finance (prospective).
Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.
How to bid
Libya’s contracting rules were rewritten in 2024, and the new Administrative Contracts Regulation, Council of Ministers Decree 600/2024 of 31 October 2024, is deemed part of the contract itself: reading the agreement alone is not enough, because the regulation carries the state’s privileges of unilateral penalties, termination in the public interest and unilateral variation of quantities.2 It also legislates a remedy for non-payment, which is itself the evidence on arrears.
| Procuring bodies | The General Authority for Water Resources, the General Company for Water and Wastewater, the Man-Made River Authority, and the General Desalination Company of Libya, established by Decision No. 924 of 2007, a public joint-stock company seated in Benghazi that supervises eight plants at Tobruk, Al-Bomba Bay, Derna, Susah, Abu Traba, Zliten, Zawia and Zuwara.1 |
|---|---|
| Routes | Public tender, limited tender and direct contracting, plus two additions in the 2024 regulation: framework agreements at fixed prices for up to two years without fixed quantities, and design contests whose winning study is then implemented.2 |
| Portal | A unified electronic portal is mandatory for tenders, awards and the blacklist. Its address is not given in the regulation.2 |
| Challenge window | Seven days from announcement of the award, to be decided within seven working days.2 |
| Payment risk | A contractor may suspend work where payment is delayed beyond two or ten weeks, depending on the approving authority, and claim up to 4% of the delayed amount as working expenses during the suspension. Late handover of the site gives a right to an extension of time or to cost compensation.2 |
| Older instrument | Council of Ministers Decree No. 12 of 2023 remains the government procurement regulation for entities spending under the first two chapters of the state budget.3 |
The open question, and the one that decides whether any of the above applies to a given contract, is the split administration: both instruments issue from the government in Tripoli, while the desalination company that owns the fleet sits in Benghazi. Whether the eastern administration applies them was not established, and neither were governing law, dispute forum, foreign ownership limits or any published arrears figure for water.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| GMMR Authority mandate | Degraded | 1983– | Operates the national conveyor at reduced capacity. |
| Water Law No. 3 | Weakly applied | 1982 | Water as public property; also governs dams. |
| National IWRM Strategy 2000–2025 | Largely unimplemented | 2005 | Main guide on water management. |
| Administrative Contracts Regulation | In force | 2024 | Council of Ministers Decree 600/2024: framework agreements, a 7-day award challenge, and a right to suspend work for late payment. |
Conditions vary by region and administration: both procurement instruments issue from Tripoli, while the desalination company that owns the plants is seated in Benghazi.
Projects
Tracked schemes in Libya, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
16 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.
Track record
What has actually been signed in Libya, from the awards log and the major projects register.
| Year | Project | Winning firms | US$ m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 on line | Hadba Khadra Wastewater Treatment Plant | Termomeccanica | n/a |
| 2007 on line | Zuwara Desalination | ENKA, with Sidem (Veolia) supplying the MED evaporators, boilers and auxiliaries | n/a |
| 2006 on line | Derna Desalination | ENKA, with Sidem (Veolia) supplying the MED evaporators, boilers and auxiliaries, and KASKTAS for piling | n/a |
| 2006 on line | Susah Desalination | ENKA, with Sidem (Veolia) supplying the MED evaporators, boilers and auxiliaries | n/a |
| 2006 on line | Zawiya Desalination | ENKA, with Sidem (Veolia) supplying the MED evaporators, boilers and auxiliaries | n/a |
Years without a label are award years from the curated log; rows marked on line are dated by commissioning, from the projects register. 5 rows in total for Libya.
Repeat winners
- ENKA, with Sidem (Veolia) supplying the MED evaporators, boilers and auxiliaries3 tracked awards
Firms or consortia appearing on two or more tracked awards in Libya.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Libya, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.
Pipeline & awards
Tenders
Prices
What households pay
| Household tariff (US$/m³) | Cost of supply (US$/m³) | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| not published | not published | n/a |
Supply is effectively unpriced at the household level.
Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.
Watch list
No dated items have been carried forward for Libya yet. This section fills from the monthly briefings as they are published.
Sources
8 references
Project, pipeline and tender records are compiled from procurer announcements, lender disclosures and trade reporting; each project page carries its own source and the date it was last checked. Institutions are from the decision-maker directory. Economic and water indicators are cited on the reference profile.
- General Desalination Company of Libya, company site.
- Amereller, “New Libyan regulations for contracting with the public sector”, 9 December 2024, on Council of Ministers Decree 600/2024. A law-firm analysis.
- Law Society of Libya, Council of Ministers Decree No. 12 of 2023, government procurement regulation.
- FAO, AQUASTAT — Global Information System on Water and Agriculture: country water resources, withdrawals by sector and dam register. fao.org/aquastat. Latest country values as compiled at build.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators and country water-sector reporting. data.worldbank.org.
- Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank), 2024 update — political-stability and regulatory-quality scores, 0–100, shown in the market snapshot. worldbank.org/wgi.
- World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Atlas (2023) — the sub-basin risk, stress and groundwater-decline layers on the interactive maps. wri.org/aqueduct.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.