From February 1 to 15, LIS-Water debated public policies and the role of water services regulation as part of the RegWAS LAC training program, which has 200 participants from 40 regulators in 19 countries.

Jaime Baptista (LIS-Water) gave a general presentation on public policies and the role of regulation. Michael Rouse (Oxford University) presented examples from various countries and lessons learned. Dambudzo Muzenda (World Bank) presented lessons learned from around the world on policies, institutions and regulation. Júlio César Aguilera (Inter-American Development Bank) presented sector reform and the role of regulation in Colombia. Jaime Baptista (LIS-Water) described the reform of services in Portugal and the role of regulation. Maria Eduarda Gouvêa (Inter-American Development Bank) described financing models and instruments. Muyatwa Sitali (Sanitation and Water for All) addressed the link between regulators and political power.

The final debate session, moderated by Rita Amaral (LIS-Water), summarized the main conclusions and answered the questions raised by participants in the online discussion forum. The main messages were as follows: adequate public policies are essential for obtaining good water and sanitation services; various components of these policies and the respective incentives must be used in an integrated manner, with gradual implementation and political commitment; local contexts are extremely important in order to ensure a better fit with reality; some components deserve a deeper look from the regulator, such as policies, legislation, institutions, intergovernmental relations, financing and resilience; sector reforms require stability, usually with a long implementation period, for the impacts to materialize; monitoring/evaluation of political and regulatory impacts is fundamental; capable institutions with complementary and well-articulated roles and responsibilities are essential; innovative financing models should be sought to make their allocation more efficient; regulators are one of the components of public policy and carry out their activity within the framework of the law and the policy established by the government; regulators must be able to interpret correctly and in detail the public policies defined by the government and contribute to their improvement; regulators act as an accelerator and balancer between the public policy established by the government and its effective implementation by operators in the field; granting independence to the regulator allows for a more effective and stable intervention in the sector; there must be an ethic of public service and, for this reason, a structure of public ownership of services with business management seems to be more effective, whether public or private, regulated with performance-based practices; for small operators, regulators should prioritize capacity building, subsequently introducing benchmarking; transparency towards society is also fundamental, with reliable data and public participation.