Over quarter of population not connected to public water supply system last year

- The population connected to the public water supply network accounted for 72.4% of Romania’s usually resident population in 2020.   The population connected to the public water supply system represented 72.4% of Romania's resident population in 2020, a release issued on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) reads.Last year, the population connected to the public water supply system was 13,936,918 people, by 208,774 more than in 2019.The increase was determined by the connection of the population to the newly built water supply networks.The population not connected to the public water supply system was 5,324,796 persons in 2020, decreasing compared to the 5,642,304 persons not connected in 2019.In calculating Romania's resident population for last year, the INS takes into account the provisional data on the resident population on July 1, the document states.At the level of development regions, in 2020, the largest share of the population connected to the public water supply system out of the total resident population was registered in the Bucharest-Ilfov region (87.5%), followed by the South-East region (85.3%).The lowest degree of connection was registered in the North-East region (52.1%), followed by the South-West Oltenia region (61.1%).In terms of water distribution, in 2020 the volume of water distributed was 1.774 billion cubic meters, about 539.59 million cubic meters higher than in 2019.The largest amount of water distributed was for agriculture and fisheries, respectively 874.39 million cubic meters (49.3% of the total).As many as 600.57 million cubic meters of water (33.8% of the total) were distributed to the population, 207.88 million cubic meters (11.7%) were distributed to industry and construction, and 92.10 million cubic meters (5.2%) were distributed to other consumers.