Assessment of irrigation infrastructure costs

Abstract

An efficient management of subsidies for the irrigation sector requires some knowledge on infrastructure costs. If a mean to access to such efficiency would be the calculation of the full cost of water resource mobilization, the assessment of the " financial " cost, which does not integrate externalities, is an intermediary step. In this paper, we propose a definition and a calculation method for this " financial cost ", which moreover enables both public authorities and managers to better understand the composition of this cost and its distribution among users. To illustrate the method, we apply it to five irrigation networks, chosen so that they may be representative of a majority of French systems. We give the details of the different components of the computation, and we compare the outcome to the price of water the user pay. We give also the limits of such a comparison. A cost-sensitivity analysis is done relatively to the discount rate we use and to the service life of the facilities.