engleski

Managing public assets efficiently : the case of Croatia

Governments should be accountable for providing the best possible service to citizenry at the most favourable value for taxpayers’ money. In that manner, they are, among other issues, responsible for managing a large, complex, diversified and costly asset portfolio. This paper examines one of critical financial challenges in Croatia: managing public assets efficiently. The research empirically investigates mutually influential factors we believe public asset management has been inefficient for. Multiple institutions managing a diverse asset portfolio have made it difficult to establish a single, central asset register containing a single source of reliable information about each single asset and about assets as a group. As a consequence, the information about assets has not been properly shared between owners and managers in different institutions (e.g., central and local government). Third, there is a lack of accounting and financial expertise regarding resource and cost allocation practices in the public sector. This results in an unwieldy mix of business processes and uncoordinated actions that prevent public asset management from becoming efficient. The lack of coherent information makes it very difficult to understand what assets are in place, what’ s their value and how to plan and budget comprehensively for asset management activities. Instead, assets are, if at all, managed on an ad-hoc, often reactive basis. Is time ripe for a reform?

public asset registry; public sector accounting; valuation; efficient utilisation; professional asset management; Croatia

Rad je u tiskanom mediju objavljen kao prosireni sazetak, a na CD-u je rad u cjlosti.