Management and Accounting for Non-financial Assets

Dec 4, 2018 , Ljubljana, Slovenia Webinar

English

Non-financial assets (often called fixed assets, such as buildings, plant and equipment) represent a significant investment of public money for both central and local government institutions and the effective management of these assets is important. Effective management involves managers making decisions about whether or not the assets are being fully utilized and used for the most appropriate purpose. Managers therefore should consider whether or not to retain an asset in its present use, change the use, dispose of it or renovate it. A recent IMF study (check Reading resources) concluded that improvement in assets management could result in an estimated 2 percent of GDP in revenue gains. Effective management includes having good information on assets owned by the public sector coupled with a management willing and able to make decisions about their future value to the organisation. Having good asset registers is part of this and importantly being willing to look critically at the present utilization of the assets.

How you benefited?

The overall objective of the webinar was to introduce the importance of information on institutions’ fixed assets for improving assets management. It examined responsibilities for assets management, how available data can be used and what needs to be done to improve management decision making on investments in and use of public assets. International experiences and good practice as well as challenges in managing assets were discussed.

The objectives of the webinar were to:

Understand the importance of asset management in fiscal management
Discuss the uses and importance of financial information on non-financial assets to managers
Define the roles and responsibilities of managers vs. Ministry of Finance or other central authorities for assets management
Explore international good practices in assets management

What you learned?

This webinar summarized and built upon the October 2017 webinar (published here) and focused on managers using information on assets and financial reports to better manage non-financial assets and improve decision-making. It emphasized that effective management of fixed assets is a function of the manager which would include the minister or mayor and the chief officials such as the state secretary in a ministry.

You got insight into following topics:

Recapping the definitions of capital expenditure and non-financial assets, and management of non-financial assets
Accounting function in a cash and accrual environment to support managers’ decision-making
Information requirements for effective assets management and the importance of valuation in decision-making
Roles and responsibilities in decision making and assets management - accounting vs management and internal control

This learning initiative was delivered in English, and highly participatory. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences and country practices.

Who attended?

The webinar was designed for:

Managers/Directors at Ministry of Finance and line ministries, and public institutions responsible for financial management
Heads of finance and accounting departments at line ministries
Senior staff at Ministry of Finance –Treasury
Senior staff at institutions in charge of maintaining fixed assets records
SAI staff engaged in audit of financial statements, methodology and quality control

Faculty

Suzanne Flynn, IMF PFM Advisor

Suzanne Flynn works for the IMF and has been based at the CEF since November 2016. She is technical assistance advisor for public financial management in South East Europe. At the CEF, Suzanne helps deliver learning programs related to her work. She joined the IMF eight years ago after six years working in East Africa with PwC and in the Ugandan treasury. She started her career in the UK public service in 1987, starting in central government, and qualifying as a CIPFA accountant in local government in 1991. Before embarking on her career in Africa, she spent 3 years working for CIPFA in London. She has also worked in a number of Asian and Central Asian countries, and worked with several governments in Europe. Her work is funded by the European Commission.

Hana Zoričić, Ministry of Finance — State Treasury, Croatia

Hana Zoričić has been working at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia for 10 years now. She started at the Ministry right after finishing the Faculty of Business and Economics in Zagreb. She continued her education while working at the Ministry and completed International MBA Program at International Graduate Business School Zagreb in partnership with Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Throughout these 10 years she has been working at the State Treasury at different departments and implementing different projects. Some of the projects she has worked on include development of program-based budgeting and performance-based budgeting in Croatia.

She was part of the team which worked on development of strategic planning system on the national level together with the design of key performance indicators for the budgetary users. In addition to designing the methodology for strategic planning Ms. Zoričić was also trainer delivering training for ministries and public sector institutions in implementing strategic planning.

In 2014 she was actively involved in the development of the methodology for conducting spending review exercise in Croatia and its implementation in practice. The most recent project in which she is Project Leader is the EU structural reform funded Project UP.04.1.08.0001 “A more efficient system of financial and statistical reporting.”

In addition to her day to day work Ms. Zoričić also lectures in the field of the Strategic Planning, Fiscal Responsibility and State Budget Accounting system by invitation and is co-author and author of articles about strategic planning, state budget and the budget accounting system.

Currently Ms. Zoričić is Head of Department in the Sector for State Accounting and Non-Profit Organizations Accounting dealing with development of the state accounting system and financial reporting together with more and more demands from the outside institutions like Eurostat and other EU institutions.

Gorana Roje, Ministry of State Assets — Division for strategic planning and project management, Croatia

Gorana Roje is senior Croatian expert with University degree in Economics and Business. In 2006 she earned her MSc degree (with the thesis titled ‘The impact of accounting basis application on financial management in public sector’). She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies with research focused on the role of the use of accounting information in enhancing public sector assets management.

She has more than 10 years of valuable working experience within the area of public sector accounting and public sector financial management. Her research is focused on international and comparative public sector accounting (PSA) and financial reporting, international public sector accounting standards setting, and public sector financial management, with a particular focus on the public sector asset management (PSAM) reforms worldwide. Her work has been presented at various international conferences and published in scientific journals.

She worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, in the Department of microeconomics, organization and management. She also worked for the State Office for State Asset Management (Croatia) as a Head of Division for state asset management strategy and planning, and central state asset registry development. Currently she holds a position of being a Head of a Division for strategic planning and project management at the Ministry of State Assets, Croatia, focusing on preparing long and mid- term asset management strategic policy documents.

She has participated in several research projects focusing on public sector accounting and public sector financial management reforms (i.e. “Accounting and financial reporting reform as a means for strengthening the development of efficient public sector financial management in Croatia”; „An integrated model of public asset management in Croatia”). In addition, she has a valuable experience in PSA and PSAM round tables, both as organizing committee member and as attendee/presenter. From 2014 up to 2018 she has been actively involved in the development of data model for Central State Asset Registry upgrade (National Reform Program measure).

Sandro Fuchs, Zurich University of Applied Sciences — Center for Public Financial Management

Sandro Fuchs is an International Expert in Public Financial Management and Head of the Center for Public Financial Management at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He has been working in the area of Public Financial Management for 10 years covering various topics, including accounting and financial reporting reforms, budgetary reforms and macroeconomic policy advisory on all governmental levels. He is an international advisor to the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and multi-national organizations such as the World Bank, IMF and OECD, covering particularly budgeting and accounting reforms. In this context has gained profound working experience in different countries with heterogeneous capacities such as Albania, Serbia, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, New Zealand or the Kyrgyz Republic. Besides his practical knowledge, Sandro has been publishing various academic articles in the area of Public Financial Management and has 10 years of experience of lecturing on University level. He holds a PhD in Public Finance from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). In his academic capacity, he was Research Fellow at the External Reporting Board (XRB) in Wellington, New Zealand in 2015.

Practical information

When: December 4, 2018, at 11:00 AM CEST

Where: From the convenience of your own computer, tablet or smartphone; you are encouraged to jointly connect with your colleagues.

Language: English

Duration: up to 90 minutes

Participation was free of charge.

How: You needed to install the WebEX plugin to your device. This should have taken only a few minutes but may required informing your system administrator. For detailed technical information you were guided to read the Guidelines on how to attend a webinar before the webinar started.

To register for this webinar you needed to click the “Apply now’’ button on the right-hand side, or click here. You were redirected to the CEF Online Learning Campus, where you needed to click the “Enroll’’ button under the title of this webinar.