A Research Of The Price Regulation For The Urban Water Supply Industry

The main research of this article is the legal regulation of water supply price. The inspiration of this question is the meeting of it in 2009.This article is composed of five parts except the instruction.The first part is the dissertation of basal of theory. The dissertation of this article includes the theory of the natural monopoly and it's development and even the natural monopoly of the urban water supply. The research of Japan shows that the reason of the natural monopoly is the economic scale. The transportation business is based of the network of the water supply in urban. Huge investment in network of water supply lead the long term of investment and result is natural monopoly in transportation.China's water price formation mechanism has been, because of information asymmetry, making consumers feel a lack of fairness. Comparatively speaking, there is a clear pricing mechanism and supervision mechanism in the Western developed countries such as America's'cost-recovery principle of the service', the British price ceiling system and the French system of consultation. The more advanced management philosophy, which includes publishing enterprises quoted price for the government, consumers participating in price-making process, is worthy of our reference.The third part in this article is legislation and innovative in controlling in water supply. The major part is legislation of water supply and the three stages legal regulation in water supply.A lot of deficiencies exit in price formation mechanism. Mainly includes:lack of scientific cost accounting system, our water price implementation of government pricing or government guiding pricing system. However, the government for operating costs of enterprises can not be fully controlled, in practice, there may even be a status that the number of businesses reported that the number of government approvalled. Price, cost is difficult to distinguish, the residents pay for water in the end is the price of water companies, or other expenses included? Should the expenditures, such as personnel salaries of enterprises, the management fees and so on, be allocated to the consumers? While there is an obvious deficiency in water price hearing system, a reasonable character and the legality of the water price has been greatly reduced which is laid down by the hearing. At the same time, the national legislation lags behind the development of the industry. If the urban water supply industry needs to be developped, there will be a must to improve the price control mechanism. First of all, to convert water price formation mechanism, the Government should be transited from the direct involvement to the indirect management; Secondly, to improve the supply price control system. To transform the role of government is to give full play to its macro-control functions, taking advantage of water supply and demand coordination balance; once again, to improve the water price hearing system, to ensure the impartiality of justice with procedures; Finally, to speed up the pace of legislation for the water price laws and regulations. Only if the legislationg is perfected, will the orderly development and legitimacy of the industry be ensured. All will be orderly developped, when there are laws to abide by.