sector. gtz supports the water and sanitation sector through a €23 million program for the institutional development of the water sector from 1994 to 2009. the program supports the decentralization reforms, strengthens local corporations, and establishes water basin committees and water resources management plans through training provided by nwsa and nwra. in mukalla on the indian ocean network losses in part of the city were reduced after rehabilitation measures financed by german development cooperation. on behalf of the german government kfw development bank provides financing for water and sanitation investments in the city of aden as well as in the towns of al shehr/al hami in mukalla district, mokha, yarim, amran, sa'dah, zabid, bajil, mansouria and beit al-faqih, the latter four being located in the al hudaydah governorate. an evaluation of an earlier project for the renewal and expansion of drinking water supply systems in eight provincial towns in yemen (bajil, bait al faqih, al mansouria, zabid, mokha, amran, yarim und hajjah), and sanitation measures in three towns (hajjah, amran and yarim) showed that the project largely achieved its objectives related to water supply. the quality of the construction work was rated as high and the collection of bills was considered to be "efficient". however, in yarim the objective was not achieved due to water shortages. only "modest improvements" were achieved regarding waste water disposal. another project to reduce water losses in taiz and mukalla was considered a partial failure: on the positive side, the evaluation showed that losses in the rehabilitated areas were reduced significantly. in mukalla, where 40% of the network was rehabilitated, they were reduced from 22% to 8%. in taiz, where only 12% of the network was rehabilitated, they fell from 45% to 6%. however, overall losses in the cities remained high at 30% in mukalla and 47% in taiz, because only parts of the network were rehabilitated. the cost of the measures was higher than expected due to the poorer than expected state of the network. kfw is now in the process of applying robust, quantitative-based evaluation methods to more accurately assess the health impact of the interventions it supported in yemeni towns based. this will be done through surveys including both beneficiaries and a control group. netherlands the netherlands have a long development assistance history in the water sector of yemen (since 1978). considerable amounts of funds have been used for urban and rural infrastructure projects in water and sanitation, irrigation, water resources assessment and management, but also for capacity development and organisational and institutional strengthening as well as water sector reform. until the late nineties the assistance mainly consisted of projects, the slowly shifting to a program approach. between 2006 and 2009, around €5 million per year is available for the water sector. rural water supply and water resources management will continue to be the main areas to which funds will be made available. in february 2006, the netherlands minister for development cooperation at the time, during her visit to yemen, signed a public-private partnership (ppp) declaration between three partners: the ta’iz water supply and sanitation local corporation vitens n.v. the largest drinking water supply company in the netherlands the netherlands ministry for development cooperation. the ppp will implement a three-year utility support program to improve the management and service delivery of the ta’iz corporation. the ppp implementation costs a total amount of €1.5 million. japan japan international cooperation agency focuses its cooperation on rural water supply, building and rehabilitating water supply facilities in 20 remote villages in five governorates, including sana'a, ibb and taiz.