Water balance by country · Updated 2026-09-29
Non-revenue water in Malaysia: SPAN reporting, state water operators and the national NRW target
How Malaysian state water operators calculate the IWA water balance for SPAN, where the national NRW rate sits, and the local metering, pressure and treatment settings to use.
Calculator settings for Malaysia
- Units
- Metric
- Benchmark category
- Standard (low & middle income for rural Sabah/Sarawak schemes)
- Meter location
- At the property frontage; 1–3 m service pipe
- Supply
- Continuous
- Reporting
- Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN) — state-by-state NRW; national target ~25% by 2030
Malaysia reports non-revenue water state by state through the national regulator SPAN. The national figure has hovered around 35–37% for many years, with a wide spread — Pulau Pinang consistently near 20%, several states above 45%. Reducing NRW to the mid-20s is a stated national objective, and the state operators (Air Selangor, Ranhill SAJ, SAINS, PBAPP and others) each run water-balance programmes to track progress.
Malaysian specifics
- Near-universal domestic metering with meters at the property frontage; enter 1–3 m of service pipe.
- Bulk water is often transferred between operators and treatment is by state; enter each treatment plant as a source, all 'traditional'.
- Aging AC and unlined steel mains in older towns drive high burst rates; real losses dominate NRW in most states, with apparent losses typically a quarter to a third.
- Tropical rainfall causes seasonal pressure variation in gravity zones; use annual average logger data.
- Tariffs are among the lowest in the region, which pushes the value of real losses toward marginal cost — enter production cost per m³ carefully, because it decides the business case.
Typical results
State-level ILIs range from around 2 in Penang to above 8 in the highest-loss states, with real losses of 100–500 litres per connection per day. Because the national conversation is framed in NRW percent, the value-of-NRW-as-share-of-opex figure on the results page is often the more persuasive number for a state government.