The long-term operations and maintenance of irrigated perimeters depend on payment enforcement and savings mechanisms. Specifically, (1) water user associations (WUAs) need to be able to deny water access to farmers who fail to make water payments; and (2) fees should be proportional to farmers’ capacity to pay. In this case, due diligence reports showed that rice farmers would be unable to pay the fees because of low returns from irrigation, which bore out in practice; and (3) there could be a need to help develop savings mechanisms. MCC is addressing this learning by exploring new institutional structures that are beyond WUAs such as bringing in the private sector for management and training in Lesotho.
Lesson Learned