Assessment of the financial resources of municipalities (original) (raw)
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Kopanyi F rom Detroit to Lahore, most cities around the world face financing challenges, yet they are still expected to carry out their increasingly complex functions. Municipal Finances: A Handbook for Local Governments Governments takes sides. It takes the side of mayors and municipal practitioners. Few publications on this topic target local-level decision makers and financial staff in such a direct and pragmatic way. The content and key messages are geared to respond to daily concerns and issues faced by cities and municipalities in managing their finances. Municipal Finances takes a position. In eight chapters, this book reviews lessons learned on intergovernmental relations, metropolitan finances, financial management, revenue management , expenditure management, public asset management, external funding, and municipal finances performance measurement. It covers topics from decentralization to transparency and accountability and travels less-charted waters of asset management, credit worthiness, response to financial crises, and reporting mechanisms to various levels of governments and citizens. Municipal Finances takes action. Not only does it provide cutting-edge knowledge on many technical issues, but it also guides local governments through the maze of existing instruments. In particular, the Municipal Finances Self-Assessment proposed in Chapter 8 should help municipalities assess their own situations and move forward on the path of reforms. Municipal finance is a key theme for development policy today. It is especially important for urban areas, where most of the demographic growth in developing countries will take place over the coming decades. The effective management and financing of urban services by local government bodies will be critical for inclusive and environmentally smart growth. Indeed, one of the main constraints to sustainable and scaled up solutions for urban service provision is the fact that municipal authorities all too often lack the institutional and financial capacity to attract market-based investment finance and to effectively operate and maintain whatever physical assets there have been able to install, often with help from higher level government or external donors. This book provides an excellent resource for anyone interested in addressing these important issues in a practical and evidence-based manner. Johannes F. Linn, PhD, Non-resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution This volume fills an important gap in the literature, which has many good texts and empirical studies, but relatively few volumes that are accessible and immediately relevant to practitioners. The chapters, each written by experienced hands and carefully edited, are very readable and illustrated with useful information about good practice drawn from many helpful examples and case studies. All in all, the volume essentially provides a welcome and useful " owner's manual " for those charged with managing both expenditures and revenues at the municipal and metropolitan level.
Management and Marketing, 2013
Drawing on a set of financial and budget specific indicators, the paper examines the financial activities of local authorities, aiming at diagnosing local public financial management. In the context of the increasing decentralization of public finance, local authorities must demonstrate the ability to manage local resources as efficiently as possible, adopting decisions (including financial ones) to respond promptly to citizen needs. For this reason, we set out to present an analysis model aimed at accustoming local decision-makers with the specific tools and methods and assisting them in gaining awareness of the benefits of such analyses. Empirical research shows that local authorities, due to the low income generation capacity, face a shortage of own resources, creating dependency on the state budget. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that that lack of resources limits both the investment capacity and the decision-making autonomy of local authorities in prioritizing spending. The...
Towards Establishing Financial and Budget Indicators for Municipalities: Theoretical Approach
European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research, 2014
Currently, one of the main problems that municipalities and other stakeholders face is having some objective indicators related to the finances and particularly the budget of municipalities in the Republic of Macedonia. Considering the nature of local government finances of the municipalities and consulting various previous studies carried in similar countries like Macedonia, it is possible to generate some representative financial or budget indicators that could apply to municipalities in the country. These indicators would serve as the basis on which municipalities could be ranked within a year or through various years dependent on the availability of the data aiming at analyzing their relative performance and positioning. This paper aims at consulting the literature about generating these indicators and analyzing their applicability in the case of municipalities in Macedonia. The output of this study is a set of financial or budget indicators related to revenues and expenditures ...
Financial indicators for municipalities: a quantitative analysis
Revista …, 2009
From the characterization of Local Authority financing models and structures in Portugal and Slovenia, a set of financial and generic budget indicators has been es-tablished. These indicators may be used in a comparative analysis considering the Bragança District in Portugal, and ...
Municipalities’ own revenue as an instrument for financial independence
2021
Research background: The article presents an analysis of the trends relating to the relation of the own income of municipalities and the received from the state budget financial resources compared with other countries which are chosen according to their form of state organization, as well as the financial relations of the municipal budget and the state budget, the budgetary relations and the applied fiscal rules.Purpose of the article: The topicality of the issues connected with the financial decentralization of municipalities and the existing problems is indisputable, as the analysis and the assessment of the financial independence of municipalities are made according to a basic index – their own income. The main problem that is connected with the independence of municipalities - lack of enough own income requires the exertion of serious efforts so that the financially weaker and local communities are protected. The globalization and the free movement of people have an adverse effe...
The Journal of Developing Areas, 2019
Much of the past studies on the determinants of financial condition argue that local government financial condition is a function of revenue capacity and spending pressure represented by various socioeconomic factors and have exhibited inconclusive results. In response, this study argues that the effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on financial conditions depend on the context in which the local government operates. The inconclusive results found in the literature suggest the need for investigating the effects of these factors in various contexts in order to understand how they operate. This research examines the relationships of spending pressure and revenue capacity with financial conditions of municipal organisations from a developing country's context. Spending pressure indicates the demands for municipal services and is represented by population size, population density and disaster susceptibility. Revenue capacity demonstrates the ability of municipal organizations in obtaining resources for public purposes. Based on theoretical and empirical studies from the literature, this study develops hypotheses and tests them using data from a random sample of 93 municipal organisations from Bangladesh. Analysing data by applying a linear regression model, the paper finds empirical supports for positive relationships of disaster susceptibility and revenue capacity but negative relationship of population size with municipal financial conditions. Such a relationship of population density is found to be positive but insignificant, which contradicts with the results found in the literature. Theoretically, this study enhances the existing literature as it facilitates a better understanding on how the socioeconomic and demographic variables interact with municipal financial conditions from a developing country context. The empirical findings can be of great significance for both managers and politicians. While municipal managers can find the information of this study useful in improving their organizational financial conditions by exploiting their relationships with socioeconomic and demographic factors to generate appropriate level of revenues and control expenditures, policy makers can derive insights from this study to devise effective financial transfer policies for maintaining sustainability of local government services.
2021
This is the concluding chapter of the study and presents a summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations. The Research Problem The purpose of the study was to analyze the income and expenditures of the municipalities in the Province of Iloilo in relation to their income enhancement measures and characteristics, such as income class, distance from Iloilo City, land area, population and political configuration. Summary of the Findings Half of the municipalities belong to second and third income class, while the other half also belong to fourth and fifth income class. Most of the municipalities had concentrated political configuration. Majority of the municipalities had land area of 100 square kilometers or less and the mean land area is 105.34 square kilometers. The average distance from Iloilo City is 54.21 kilometers and majority of the municipalities are 50 kilometers or less away from the city. Slightly more than half had population of more than 30,000, while slightly less ...
Revenues of Municipalities as a Tool of Local Self-Government Development (Comparative Study
A municipality's budget is a tool that significantly affects the long-term economic potential of the area. In addition, it is an important tool for the management of the municipality, in relation to the effective provision of public services for inhabitants. To ensure them, it uses the revenues that the local self-government receives from various sources. The aim of the paper is to characterize and to compare the mechanism of creating revenues of the local self-government in the Slovak and Czech Republic and, at the same time, to analyze the relationships between individual groups of local revenues in the time period 2009-2018. We analyzed the basic groups of municipal revenues: total revenues, current revenues, and capital revenues. For the analysis, we used selected mathematical-statistical methods (trend lines, correlation coefficient). Although both countries were part of one country, both have a dual model of public administration and have undergone fiscal decentralization; the structure and sources of local self-government revenues are different. However, a common attribute is the dependence of local self-government on state revenues. Tax revenues are the most important part of current budget revenues. Despite fiscal decentralization, local budget revenues are dependent on the state. In the Slovak Republic, share taxes from the state represent 74% of the total tax revenues of municipalities, and in the Czech Republic, 85% of the total tax revenues of municipalities.
Financial Effectiveness and Areas of Improvement in Greek Municipalities
The aim of this research is to separate the entire sample of Municipalities in Greece into categories, based on the effectiveness of financial management and financial performance into effective and ineffective ones. In this study, it investigated the existence of differences between the characteristics of these two categories. The main objective is to investigate the influence of financial effectiveness regarding those areas falling under state jurisdiction with the greatest room for improvement. Specifically, in Municipalities with ineffective financial management, local employment was notably considered to be the area with the greatest margin for improvement. Additionally, 21% of mayors of Municipalities with effective financial management consider that the state area of responsibility with the greatest capacity for improvement is that of attracting private investment. Moreover, the influence of financial effectiveness regarding the areas of competence of Greek Municipalities with the greatest room for improvement has a similar pattern. According to responses from mayors in Municipalities with ineffective financial administration, the areas of competence with the greatest room for improvement are provision and maintenance of infrastructure (23% of responses) and attraction of private investment (19% of responses). Accordingly, responses from mayors in Municipalities with the highest financial performance indicate that the areas of competence with the greatest room for improvement are provision and maintenance of infrastructure (21% of responses) and attraction of private investment (20% of responses).