More than 11.4 million inhabitants, accounting for 60.1 percent of Romania’s resident population, had their homes connected to sewerage facilities in 2023; this number is by 174,369 higher than in 2022, shows data released on Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

As far as wastewater treatment is concerned, as many as 11,176,443 people (58.7 percent of the total population) were connected to sewage provided with treatment plants; this number is by 114,011 higher than in 2022. The increases were the effect of the connection of the population to the newly built sewerage networks, respectively by the commissioning of new wastewater treatment plants.

By development regions, the highest share of the population connected to sewerage systems of the total resident population was recorded in the Bucharest-Ilfov region (95.4 percent), followed by the Center region (72.7 percent) and the West region (71.9 percent).

The development regions with the lowest sewage connection rate were: North-East (40.3 percent), South-Muntenia (41.8 percent) and South-West Oltenia (51.7 percent).

In 2023, as many as 9,828,927 urban residents representing 98.9 percent of Romania’s urban resident population were connected to sewage facilities. In the countryside, the number of residents served by sewage systems was 1,622,102, accounting for 17.8 percent of the rural resident population.

AGERPRES