ONAS regional sanitation concessions, and their seven-year procurement
Tunisia's national sanitation utility ONAS launched procurement of its first two ten-year regional concessions in September 2017; the south-east concession started in June 2024 and served 797,000 people by July 2026, and the North Tunis concession entered into force only on 9 July 2026 after the original consortium had to be reorganised.
797,000 people, people receiving wastewater collection and treatment from the concessionaire (south-east lot only), 2026-07. 0 agreements, concession agreements signed and effective at the june 2023 status report, against a target of two by december 2020, 2023-06-05. World Bank, Implementation Status and Results Report, Tunisia Sanitation PPP Support Project (P162957), sequence 7, 23 September 2026, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The national sanitation utility bundled the operation, maintenance and rehabilitation of whole regional networks and treatment plants into ten-year performance-based concessions, procured with IFC transaction support and paid from a World Bank loan, replacing short task-based management contracts.
Preconditions
- An inter-ministerial decision (August 2016) approving a performance-based concession structure for a public utility
- External finance to guarantee payments to operators while the utility's own tariffs covered only part of its costs
- A concession unit inside the utility able to supervise operators, which the project had to build
Limits: The 797,000 and the North Tunis entry into force are on pages 2 and 3 of the September 2026 status report, which says the count derives from the south-east lot only and is 92 percent of that lot's end target; the end target for both lots is 2,028,000 people by July 2030. The south-east concession with SCAST was 'scheduled to start on Jun 10, 2024' in the June 2024 status report, and the 783,000 beneficiaries the September 2026 report gives for February 2026 confirm it did. The zero signed agreements against a December 2020 target are in the June 2024 status report (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099061224041597450/pdf/P162957-61a112cc-f5f3-4ef2-ac1e-0e3c14a54b06.pdf, which also attributes the North Tunis delay to the reorganisation of the ADP-led consortium). The 2017 launch is in the project appraisal document of November 2022, paragraph 13. The World Bank finances the operators' payments through this loan (the status report lists the operation and maintenance component at a cost of 415.30, in US$ millions), so the concessions are public money paying private operators under performance contracts, not private finance, and the lender is reporting on its own project. 'People receiving services' counts the population in the concession area, not households newly connected: only 3,400 people had gained access to improved sanitation through the project by July 2026. The record shows a partnership delivered at national-utility scale but nine years after procurement began, which is as much evidence of slow delivery as of collaboration.