Municipal asset management in China's small cities and towns

Alessandra Campanaro, Joanna Mclean Masic, Olga Kaganova, Hongye Fan, Hazem Abdelfattah, Alessandra Campanaro and Joanna Mclean Masic

No 7997, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Chinese municipalities have developed a large stock of capital assets during a period of rapid growth and urbanization, but have yet to modernize asset management practices. Cities face challenges such as premature decline of fixed assets and spiking liabilities related to operating and maintaining the assets. This paper evaluates the asset management practices in three selected small cities and towns in China, using a benchmarking assessment tool followed by an in-depth field assessment. The paper finds that overall performance is below half of international benchmark for good practice in all three cities. Management practices are considerably more advanced for land than for buildings and infrastructure. Key deficiencies in data availability and reporting, governance, capacity, and financial management indicate increased risks for local government finance and the delivery of public services. For small cities and towns where public revenues are often uncertain and limited, urban public services will be at risk of deterioration unless good asset management practices are put in place. The paper recommends strategic actions for both upper and lower levels of government to advance local asset management practices and facilitate the reform agenda.

Keywords: Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Local Finance Management; Hydrology; Transport Services; Municipal Management and Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/970471488824140310/pdf/WPS7997.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7997

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().