Most of us in the development community are aware that proper water and sanitation services are crucial for life and health. Proper sanitation especially can decrease the instances and spread of disease. But in making the case to Ministers of Finance, it is often the economic and financial case that we have to make in order to garner the investments needed to make a difference. A Water and Sanitation Program report we released last month, called Economic Impact of Sanitation in Indonesia ( pdf ), makes that case for that country. The report says that the economic costs of poor hygiene and sanitation in Indonesia reached an estimated US$6.3 billion, or 2.3 percent of GDP in 2006. Poor sanitation, including poor hygiene, causes at least 120 million disease episodes and 50,000 premature deaths annually, the report says. The resulting economic impact is more than US$3.3 billion (IDR 29 trillion) per year. Poor sanitation also contributes significantly to water pollution—adding to the cost of safe water for households, and reducing the production of fish in rivers and lakes. The associated economic costs of polluted water attributed to poor sanitation exceed US$1.5 billion (IDR 13 trillion) per year. In 2006, Indonesia lost an estimated total of US$6.3 billion (IDR 56 trillion) due to poor sanitation and hygiene, equivalent to approximately 2.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the report says. Health and water resources contribute ...
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