“The opportunities opening out in the international water sector are driving year’s Global Water Summit Paris to be the biggest yet,” commented Christopher Gasson, Publisher at Global Water Intelligence (GWI) the co-organiser of the conference. “With more than US$150bn of investments in desalination, water distribution, wastewater treatment under discussion and a full slate of industrial water users attending the event, registrations are 10% up on last year’s blockbuster event in Madrid.”

The summit will host a ‘blended finance’ workshop in partnership with the World Bank, aimed at developing structures that bring together public and private resources to deliver water infrastructure projects in emerging markets.

Forming part of the summit’s finance agenda strand, the blended finance session will bring together representatives of development finance institutions with top performing utility leaders and government officials from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, as they plan to use their access to low cost finance to mobilise private investment in infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. The session will explore how the water sector should proceed in developing structures that bring together public and private resources to deliver water infrastructure projects in emerging markets.

The Global Water Summit will also feature round tables hosted by officials and finance institution representatives, providing insights on private sector opportunities in several key regions with major infrastructure spending plans including the USA, Argentina, Morocco, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, and India. Together these national spending plans represent $100 billion of water infrastructure investment.

The 2018 summit will be preceded by a pre-conference workshop on the privatisation of Saudi Arabia’s water sector, held on 15th April 2018 in partnership with The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA), the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), the National Water Company (NWC) and the Water and Electricity Company.

The officials from the four Saudi organisations will be hosting the workshop in a bid to outline the kingdom’s £60 billion investment opportunity, and to identify and attract top-performing potential partners for their investment plans at the earliest stage of the privatisation process.

Emerging opportunities for the desalination market will also form part of The Global Water Summit agenda, with over five million m3/d of new desalination capacity being presented in Paris.

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