This chapter provides a set of robust and comparable data on water prices in selected OECD countries. It covers abstraction charges, pollution charges, pricing water supply and sanitation for households and industrial users (including connection charges).

The data show that, generally speaking, efforts are being made in OECD countries to better reflect the costs and externalities related to water use by households and industrial users. This is reflected in the deployment of abstraction and pollution charges, in the level of prices (which have increased, at times substantially, over the last decade) and in the structure of tariffs (which better reflect consumption and treatment costs).