At the end of the 1990’s, the World Banks has started a large-scale, international performance benchmarking programme for water and sewage utilities. Within the framework of the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET) initiative, utilities submitted information about their day-to-day working on a standardised questionnaire. Using unique company data, a database was set up, which allows for the comparative analysis (or performance benchmarking) of water utilities. Information on the initiative can be found ont he www.ib-net.org website.

The survey has already been conducted in mire than 70 countries, including Hungary. REKK was commissioned for this task.

We havecarried out the data collection and a statistical analysis based ont he database for the water utilities of CEntral and Eastern Europe to highlight the relations of physical background and costs.