The Department of Water and Sanitation is making headway in establishing the National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency (NWRIA), which it aims to establish by April 2026. The Department of Water and Sanitation briefed Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation on progress in establishing the agency.
“While we acknowledge the value proposition offered by rationalisation of various entities within the DWS to a single entity to ensure effective development and maintenance of the country’s water infrastructure, it is important that risk mitigation procedures are built into the system to ensure efficiency and success. Effective operation of assets and ensuring revenue collection through water sales is critical to ensure the sustainability of the entity,” said Mr Leon Basson, the Chairperson of the committee.
The agency will be established through an act of Parliament, which was passed in the sixth Parliament. The NWRIA exists to ensure a reliable supply of water from water resources infrastructure, with acceptable risk, to meet sustainable national, regional, social, economic and environmental objectives for all South African citizens. The agency will solicit and source funding to implement, operate and maintain water resources infrastructure efficiently and effectively.
There has been a general concern in South Africa that the fiscus is unable to implement water infrastructure projects at the scale needed by the South African economy. As a result, the NWRIA aims to significantly increase investment in water infrastructure, potentially tripling the current annual investment from around R10 billion to R30 billion. The agency will address the current fragmentation in water resource management between the Department of Water and Sanitation, the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) and the Water Trading Entity, and to establish an agency that is able to raise funds on its balance sheet to increase investment in water infrastructure.
The committee welcomed the briefing, including the information that there is a technical coordinating mechanism between DWS and the TCTA, with technical, financial, legal, human resources, governance, IT and communications workstreams.
In terms of governance, the department informed the committee that the term of the current board of the TCTA expires at the end of December 2025, and the DWS will be recommending to the Minister that she extends the term of the current board until the NWRIA is fully established, at which time the TCTA will be disestablished.
Despite the committee welcoming the progress, it has called on the department to ensure risk mitigation measures to ensure that the agency does not face challenges similar to other state-owned entities. The committee was steadfast in its call that the agency must not end up like other state-owned entities that have struggled due to governance and administrative challenges. Also, the committee remains acutely aware that there is a general challenge of debt within the water value chain, hence the call for safeguards to ensure that the agency does not suffer in the long term due to the non-payment for services.
Furthermore, some members raised a concern that leveraging assets had an inherent risk of placing South Africa’s water sovereignty at risk if the agency is unable to repay infrastructure development loans. Despite this concern, the committee was reassured by the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority’s (TCTA) 40-year history of repaying its loans, seeing this as evidence that the NWRIA will be able to do the same.
The committee informed the department that it expects periodic updates on progress with establishing the agency. For its part, the committee committed to expedite the process to finalise the NWRIA Amendment Bill. The bill’s main objective is to clarify the NWRIA’s status as a public entity and align its financial management with the Public Finance Management Act.
Malatswa Molepo
2 July 2025
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