Market brief
Palestine
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Palestine, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for PalestineMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Palestine: 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 frameworkNascent
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 0.7 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersWorld Bank, EU
- Climate adaptation planIn preparation
Opportunities
- Gaza desalination programme
- Wastewater treatment & reuse
- Network rehabilitation
Key challenges
- Constrained access to shared aquifers
- Gaza coastal aquifer over-abstraction & salinity
- High non-revenue water
- Fragmented infrastructure
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 Palestine. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- Palestinian Water Authority (PWA)Ministry
- Water Sector Regulatory Council (WSRC)Regulator
- Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU)Utility
- West Bank Water DepartmentUtility
- Joint Water CommitteeCoordination body
How deals are structured
The framework in Palestine is Nascent, the schemes we track carry US$ 0.7 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are World Bank, EU, KfW.
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
Palestine has the region’s most transparent regulator and its least tractable logistics. The Water Sector Regulatory Council, established under Decree Law 14 of 2014 and funded by fees from the providers it regulates, publishes both what water sells for and what it costs: NIS 5.08 a cubic metre sold against NIS 5.5 of operating and maintenance cost in the West Bank in 2023, so most large providers sell below cost.1
| Who procures | The water authority for national and donor-financed schemes; individual providers, meaning municipalities, joint service councils, water undertakings and cooperatives, for their own networks; the coastal utility in Gaza.12 |
|---|---|
| Counterparty scale | More than fifty providers still cannot supply 50 litres per person a day. Policy is to consolidate toward a limited number of regional utilities, with a national water company as bulk supplier.12 |
| The binding constraint | Materials, not procurement. Israel classifies thousands of civilian items as dual-use and restricts their entry to Gaza, including construction materials, chemicals, equipment and spare parts, with the list extended since October 2023. Pumps, dosing chemicals, generators, pipe and fittings all sit in the disputed category, so any schedule needs an approvals float and any bid must price plant sitting at a crossing.3 |
| Performance baseline | Non-revenue water is 35% against the authority’s 30% maximum; closing that gap alone would raise water sold from 82 to 88 litres per person a day, and the losses are worth more than NIS 250 million a year at an assumed NIS 5 a cubic metre.1 |
The tariff instrument is the unified tariff system for water and wastewater of 2021. The regulator could not compile complete 2023 figures for Gaza, because every aspect of service there changed after October 2023.1 What could not be established: the licensing article for private participation, contract forms, payment security, dispute forum, ownership and tax, and the current status of the joint water committee.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oslo II, Article 40 + Schedule 10 | Frozen | 1995 | Interim allocations; JWC largely dormant. |
| Palestinian Water Law | In force | 2014 | PWA as regulator; utility corporatisation. |
| Gaza desalination programme | Reconstruction-dependent | — | EU/EIB central plant + energy package. |
All arrangements contingent on the political and security situation.
Projects
Tracked schemes in Palestine, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
Track record
No awards are on the record for Palestine yet. The awards log grows with each monthly review.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Palestine, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~$1.40 | ~$1.52 | 2023 | Water Sector Regulatory Council, performance report for 2023 |
The regulator publishes realised averages rather than a single tariff: NIS 5.08/m³ of water sold against an operating and maintenance cost of NIS 5.5/m³ in the West Bank, so most large providers sell below cost. Non-revenue water is 35% against a 30% maximum, and the tariff instrument is the unified system of 2021. No 2023 figure exists for Gaza.
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 Palestine 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.
- Water Sector Regulatory Council (Palestine), performance report of water service providers, 2023, published August 2024.
- Palestinian Water Authority, Financing strategies for the water sector, December 2014.
- Gisha, on Israel’s dual-use classification and its effect on entry of goods to Gaza, 17 March 2026.
- 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.