You may have seen the image above, or something similar, circulating on social media. I came across it in my Facebook feed. The number caught my attention, so I went looking for the data behind it.
Disclaimer: This is an AI-assisted article. However, the original idea for the article, original prompt, prompt iterations, checking source data, et cetera, are the result of my effort. I’ve been writing articles for this blog before GPT’s. These articles looked at the numbers behind interesting topics and subjects. For example, murder rates, COVID numbers, fuel prices, fast-food prices, voter turnout, and more (I started this blog back in 2017). With the help of AI, I can now ideate, research, analyse and write faster and better.
Moving on…
The image above makes a bold claim: “The Caribbean loses an average of 46% of its treated public water supply to non-revenue water.”
It goes on to attribute the losses to severe pipeline leakage, ageing infrastructure and theft, and says that Guadeloupe, Jamaica and Guyana are among the countries with the worst rates, at more than 60%. Those are some serious numbers (especially in the Caribbean where many countries are water scarce).
However, the image provides no source for the data (typical of many of these types of social media posts). It doesn’t say what year the figures represent. It doesn’t define what it means by “the Caribbean”. Although it initially refers to non-revenue water, it later describes the figures as water leakage rates (not the same thing as NRW).
So, as this case with some of the posts on my blog, I went looking for the numbers.
Where does the 46% figure come from?
There appears to be a credible basis for the 46% figure. In 2021, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) published its Caribbean Water Study, examining the operational and financial performance of selected Caribbean water utilities. One of the major issues examined was non-revenue water (NRW), which the IDB identified as one of the biggest challenges facing water utilities in the region (See here).
However, the first important qualification is that the study does not represent every country and territory in the Caribbean (remember the image at the top of the article and the claim). It covers The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grand Cayman, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. The IDB itself describes the exercise as benchmarking selected water utilities.
That means that the statement “the Caribbean loses 46% of its water” is too broad. A more accurate statement might have been:
“A 2021 IDB study found average non-revenue water of around 46% among the Caribbean water utilities it benchmarked.“
There is another important caveat: the underlying figures used in the study were not necessarily all collected in the same year. The exercise is useful for comparing utilities, but it should not be treated as a single-year census of water losses across the entire Caribbean.
What exactly is non-revenue water?
This distinction is important because non-revenue water does not simply mean leaking water. NRW is the difference between the amount of water entering a distribution system and the amount ultimately billed to consumers. It can include physical leakage, but also commercial or apparent losses such as unauthorised consumption and meter inaccuracies, as well as authorised consumption that is not billed (see here).
Information from the Jamaican government for example refers to NRW programmes addressing both physical and commercial losses (see here). So if a water utility reports NRW of 50%, it does not necessarily mean that half of the water it produces is leaking into the ground.
That makes the wording of the Facebook image problematic. It correctly starts by referring to non-revenue water, but later describes the figures as “water leakage rates.” They should not automatically be treated as interchangeable.
An ECLAC study reproducing the IDB data provides a useful comparison:
| Country/Territory | Non-revenue water |
|---|---|
| Jamaica | 73% |
| Guyana | 68% |
| Saint Lucia | 56% |
| Dominica | 53% |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 50% |
| Barbados | 45% |
| The Bahamas | 37% |
| Suriname | 31% |
| Grenada | 26% |
| Belize | 20% |
See here for source re ECLAC study.
Grand Cayman was included in the IDB study (mentioned above), but comparable NRW data were not presented in the above table.
The differences are clear. At one end of the comparison, Belize stood at just 20%. At the other, Jamaica recorded 73%, followed by Guyana at 68%. Saint Lucia, Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago were also at or above 50%. Barbados, at 45%, was close to the reported average.
Five of the ten jurisdictions for which comparable data were available therefore had NRW rates of 50% or more. So while there are problems with the way the statistic in the Facebook image is presented, the underlying issue is very real.
Barbados: almost half
For Barbados, the IDB benchmark puts NRW at 45%. Reducing NRW remains sufficiently important such that in May 2025 the Government of Barbados signed a US$700,000 grant agreement with CAF — Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean — to support the Barbados Water Authority in reducing non-revenue water and strengthening infrastructure for improved water security (see here).
Jamaica: the region’s standout problem
Jamaica recorded the highest NRW rate in the IDB comparison, at 73%. More recent figures suggest that the national problem remains enormous.
In April 2026, Jamaica’s Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change described NRW as a “crisis” and said the country’s islandwide NRW reduction programme would target a reduction from 71% to 30% by 2035.
The programme is valued at approximately US$340 million. The Jamaican government estimates that reaching the target could generate approximately J$10.7 billion annually through additional revenue and savings on electricity and chemicals (see here).
But Jamaica also shows why national averages should be interpreted carefully. Targeted intervention has produced significant improvements in some areas. Government reporting says NRW in Kingston and St Andrew was once around 70% but was subsequently reduced into the 30% range (see here).
Elsewhere, the losses remain concerning. In 2026, Jamaica announced its Western Water Resilience Project, which includes replacing and rehabilitating ageing pipelines. NRW along the transmission corridor between the Great River and Queen of Spain/New Martha Brae treatment plants was estimated at 71%, while losses along another corridor extending towards Negril were put at 68% (see here).
That variation tells us something important: even a national NRW figure can conceal substantial differences within the same country’s water network.
Why does this matter?
There is an obvious environmental cost to losing treated water, particularly in Caribbean countries that periodically face drought and water restrictions (see here).
But there is also an economic cost. Water does not magically arrive in a pipe. It has to be extracted, treated, stored and pumped through a distribution network. That requires electricity, chemicals, equipment, infrastructure and labour.
If a utility treats 100 litres of water but receives revenue for only 50 or 60 litres, much of the cost associated with producing and distributing the remainder has already been incurred.
Jamaica provides a useful illustration. Government officials have argued that reducing NRW can make additional water available without increasing the amount being produced. In 2017, Jamaica’s government estimated that reducing NRW from 60% to 30% could effectively make another 30 million gallons available at the same production cost (see here).
The IDB similarly identifies NRW reduction as one of the most direct ways Caribbean water utilities can improve efficiency, financial performance and quality of service, while also contributing to climate-change adaptation (see here).
So, does the Caribbean really lose 46% of its water?
The answer is more complicated than the Facebook image suggests. The 46% statistic has a credible basis, but saying simply that “the Caribbean loses 46% of its treated public water supply” gives the figure more precision and geographic coverage than what my basic research supports.
The IDB examined selected Caribbean water utilities, not every Caribbean country and territory. The underlying observations were not necessarily all from the same reporting year. And most importantly, non-revenue water isn’t synonymous with physical leakage.
So the claim needs qualification. But here’s the interesting part: correcting the statistic doesn’t make the underlying problem disappear. The IDB/ECLAC comparison found NRW of 73% in Jamaica, 68% in Guyana, 56% in Saint Lucia, 53% in Dominica and 50% in Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados wasn’t far behind at 45% (see here).
And years after that study was published, Jamaica is still reporting national NRW of around 71% and investing hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to bring it down (see here).
Are we asking the wrong question?
Caribbean discussions about water security often focus on finding more water — new wells, reservoirs, treatment facilities, desalination and other investments designed to increase supply.
Those investments may well be necessary. But there is another side of the equation. If enormous quantities of water that have already been extracted and treated are being lost physically or commercially before generating revenue, increasing production alone doesn’t address the underlying inefficiency.
In some cases, saving water that is already being produced may be just as important as producing more of it. Furthermore, the Facebook image, and it’s statistic of 46% needs context. Its use of non-revenue water and leakage as though they mean exactly the same thing is problematic. And its definition of “the Caribbean” is missing altogether.
Finally, this article also reveals something possibly more important than the social-media graphic itself: Some Caribbean water utilities may be failing to generate revenue from half — and in extreme cases more than two-thirds — of the treated water entering their systems. For a region where water security is already a concern, that’s a number worth paying attention to.
Amit Uttamchandani is a Caribbean technology and business executive and data enthusiast. Since 2017, he has used caribbeansignal.com to explore the numbers, trends and ideas behind issues affecting Barbados and the wider Caribbean.