More than 10.293 million inhabitants had their homes connected to the sewerage systems in 2018, 52.7 per cent of the Romanian resident population, by 314,155 more than in the previous year, showed data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) on Thursday.
"The increases were due to the population getting connected to the newly built sewerage systems and the commissioning of new waste water treatment stations," said the INS.
By development regions, the highest share of the population connected to the sewerage systems from the total population was registered in the Bucharest-Ilfov area (86.3 per cent), followed by the central area (65 per cent) and western area (59.4 per cent). The lowest share of the population connected to the sewerage systems from the total population was registered in the South Muntenia region (36.5 per cent), North East region (36.7 per cent) and South-West Oltenia (38.8 per cent).
In 2018, in the urban environment, the population connected to the sewerage system accounted for almost 9.401 million persons, representing 89.5 per cent of the urban population in Romania, and for 892,524 persons in the rural environment, 9.9 per cent of the population.