Non-governmental organizations are responsible for water supply in 60% of Brazilian cities.

Agência Brasil - The existence of regulatory instruments for the sewage system is still incipient in all Brazilian regions. In the Southeast region, only 30% of its municipalities have laws to regulate sanitation issues. In the North, the percentage drops to less than 5%.

The 2011 Sanitation Atlas, released this Wednesday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), highlights these and other data based on a reinterpretation of the 2008 National Basic Sanitation Survey (PNSB).

In 58,2% of Brazilian municipalities, water supply services are the responsibility of non-governmental entities, and in 24,7% of them, the service is provided in a combined manner. Only 17% of the country's municipalities provide water to the population exclusively.

Less than 10% of municipalities in the North and Northeast regions have any agency responsible for sanitation services. In 70% of municipalities with an agency responsible for sanitation, the city governments also manage waste, with the exception of the Southeast region.

According to one of the project researchers, Daniela Santos Barreto, the data shows enormous inequality within the same metropolitan region with regard to instruments for inspection, monitoring, and evaluation of this service.

"In theory, metropolitan regions are groups of municipalities that share a similar political identity and level of development and urbanization. However, when we look at the data, we identify cities with very low levels of management tools and others with specific municipal legislation on the subject and a well-defined sanitation policy."

In most Brazilian municipalities, stormwater management was handled by the city government itself, with the exception of those in northern Pará. Waste management was also the responsibility of the city governments, mainly in the North, Central-West, and Northeast regions. In the South and Southeast regions, the service was provided with the participation of agencies from more than one administrative level.

Charges for basic sanitation services are levied in over 70% of municipalities in the Southern Region. Charges for solid waste management services are quite significant in the Southeastern Region, except for cities located in the northern part of Minas Gerais. In other regions and in the interior, such charges are almost non-existent.

Furthermore, according to the study, more than 40% of municipalities in the Northern Region did not include funds in their municipal budget for solid waste management. In the Southern Region, more than 80% of municipalities allocated part of their budget for this type of service.