Abstract

Irrigation water management is facing organisational changes worldwide. At the beginning of the 1990s, Turkey started an accelerated transfer program in which management, operation and maintenance (MOM) responsibilities for the irrigation schemes were transferred to water users, who were mostly organized as irrigation association (IA). This study aims to benchmarking performance assessment of water users’ organizations (WUOs) taken over irrigation water management in the Susurluk River Basin, Turkey.  For this purpose, the indicators of water delivery, financial and productive efficiency were used. Averages of the organizations for the years between 2002 and 2007 calculated from the results ranged of 1878 to 10484 m³ ha^–1 for annual irrigation water delivery per unit command area (WDCA), 4633 to 16077 m³ ha^–1 for annual irrigation water delivery per unit irrigated area (WDIA), 0.75 to 1.45 for annual relative water supply,78 to 124% for cost recovery ratio, 78 to 257 $ ha^–1 for total MOM cost per unit area, 73 to 95% for water fee collection, 391 to 4377 $ ha^–1 for output per unit command area, 3348 to 5744 $ ha^–1 for output per unit irrigated area, 0.208 to 1.109 $ m^–3 for output per unit irrigation supply and 0.223 to 0.992 $ m^–3 for output per unit water consumed. The study results showed that the benchmarking indicators provided the WUOs in the basin to see where they were placed in comparison with others. As a result, performance assessment and benchmarking can help to improve performance of irrigation water management in a river basin.

Key words: Benchmarking, performance indicator, water management, organization.