Through this Executive Order the ANA’s name was changed from National Waters and Basic Sanitation Agency to National Waters Agency
In accordance with the government transition team’s speech, the new government issued some normative acts in relation to the sanitation sector in Brazil. Through these normative acts, ANA’s name was changed from National Waters and Basic Sanitation Agency to National Waters Agency and also the Ministry to which ANA is linked was changed. Before ANA was linked to the Ministry of Regional Development and now it is linked to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
However, the main change is the exclusion from article 3 of Law 9,984 of ANA’s responsibility of creating standard normative for the regulation of public services of basic sanitation. This was a responsibility granted to ANA by the Sanitation legal framework of 2020, which had been celebrated by the sector. Since then, ANA has already published some rules to standardize the regulation of the sanitation sector which is very pulverized. After the market bad reaction, the government informed that this change on ANA’s responsibility was a mistake. However, it has not revoked the normative acts yet. As 2023 is a year in which several concession bids are forecasted, it is important that this change is revoked sooner than later. Otherwise, the legal uncertainty in the market can increase and affect the private investments in the sector.
