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  "title": "Unlocking Public Wealth: Governments and Public Assets",
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  "summary": "Technological disruption and globalization will open many new opportunities for multiple uses of public assets.\"content=\"Technological disruption and globalization will open many new opportunities for multiple uses of public assets.\"",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Overview",
      "content": "- National and local governments own large portfolios of public assets—primarily real estate and government-owned companies—that are often undervalued and undermanaged.\n- Better governance and professional, politically independent management could convert latent asset value into revenue streams to fund budgets, lower taxes, or finance infrastructure."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Evidence and illustrative case studies",
      "content": "- Boston (reported figures):\n  - Total assets reported in 2014: $3.8 billion.\n  - Real estate reported: $1.4 billion.\n  - Liabilities reported: $4.6 billion.\n  - Independent indicative valuation of Boston’s real estate portfolio: about $55 billion.\n  - Boston Housing Authority holdings: $4.7 billion.\n  - Boston Public Market valuation: $5.6 million.\n  - Assumed conservative yield improvement: 3 percent on a $55 billion portfolio → income of almost $1.7 billion a year.\n  - Comparison: Boston’s current capital plan: about $400 million.\n- Copenhagen’s By og Havn (City and Port):\n  - Size: 1,290 acres in waterfront and inland districts.\n  - Projected outputs include more than 33,000 new housing units, 100,000 work spaces, a new university for more than 20,000 students, plus parks and retail and cultural facilities.\n  - Returns helped finance local metro system expansion.\n- Hamburg’s HafenCity:\n  - Size: 157-hectare (388 acre) development.\n  - Transformation into more than 2 million square meters of space for offices, hotels, shops, and residential areas.\n- Hong Kong SAR’s MTR Corporation:\n  - Funded and managed rail infrastructure, large housing estates, and shopping complexes integrated into stations and pays a substantial dividend to the city."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Scale of public commercial assets and potential gains",
      "content": "- IMF 2013 context:\n  - World GDP in 2013: $75 trillion.\n  - World public debt: $54 trillion.\n- Authors’ estimates:\n  - Public commercial assets globally are on the same order of magnitude as annual world GDP.\n  - At the city level, public real estate portfolios can be roughly the same value as a city’s GDP and may represent a quarter of total market value of real estate.\n- Conservative global yield improvement example:\n  - An additional annual yield of 3 percent worldwide would amount to $2.7 trillion—more than current global spending on transportation, power, water, and communications infrastructure combined.\n- Institutional performance benchmarks:\n  - Temasek reported an average annual return of 15 percent over the 35 years since its inception."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Missed opportunities and examples of unrealized value",
      "content": "- Boston Logan Airport hypothetical:\n  - Moving Logan from prime waterfront to cheaper inland property could create a windfall gain in waterfront real estate potentially well exceeding the cost of a new airport and infrastructure, with indirect GDP and living-standard benefits and direct public-wealth gains for infrastructure spending.\n- Inventory and valuation gaps:\n  - 2017 inspector general’s audit of Washington, DC: the Department of General Services “neither maintained a complete and accurate inventory of District-owned property, nor submitted annual reports detailing changes in this inventory to the D.C. Council as required by law.”"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Risks, democratic costs, and management shortfalls",
      "content": "- Democratic and governance costs:\n  - Easy access to public wealth introduces incentives for abuse: political favors, lucrative contracts or positions, free access to public resources in exchange for support, wage pressures via state firms, and yielding to vocal minority opposition—leading to clientelism.\n- Operational performance:\n  - State-owned firms often lag private firms; Bloom and van Reenen (2010) show state-owned firms lag private firms considerably.\n  - Local governments entering commercial property markets without professional capacity face huge financial and fiscal risks (example: local councils in the United Kingdom borrowing to buy commercial real estate)."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Institutional solutions and policy recommendations",
      "content": "- Accounting and transparency:\n  - Shift from historical-cost book value reporting to market-value assessment (for example, via International Financial Reporting Standards) to reveal true asset values.\n  - Use accrual accounting and consolidated balance sheets to quantify fiscal risks, including guarantees and contingent liabilities (aligned with the IMF’s fiscal transparency code).\n- Create independent governance structures:\n  - Establish independent balance sheets and institutions (public wealth funds or state holding companies) to detach commercial governance from short-term political influence, encourage active long-term governance, and ensure funding of maintenance and life-cycle costs.\n  - Examples of institutional arrangements:\n    - National wealth funds or state holding companies (ÖIAG in Austria; Solidium in Finland).\n    - City-level independent holding companies/funds (Copenhagen’s City & Port Company; Hamburg’s HafenCity).\n    - Temasek and comparable professional institutions as performance benchmarks.\n- Policy actions being taken:\n  - United Kingdom launched a balance sheet review to improve returns on investments and reduce cost of liabilities to release resources for public services and improve fiscal sustainability."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Outlook and transformative drivers",
      "content": "- Over the coming decades, technological disruption and globalization will open new opportunities for multifunctional uses of public assets (for example, self-driving cars freeing parking space; revamping harbors, airports, and transport infrastructure).\n- Success depends on transparent accounting of owned assets and government policies that promote creation of value through professional and independent asset management.\n\nSource: F&D Magazine, \"Unlocking Public Wealth,\" Dag Detter and Stefan Fölster, March 2018.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- تحرير الثروة العامة\n  - تحرير الثروة العامة (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - تحرير الثروة العامة (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- Unlocking Public Wealth: Governments and Public Assets - IMF F&D Magazine\n  - Unlocking Public Wealth: Governments and Public Assets - IMF F&D Magazine (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Unlocking Public Wealth: Governments and Public Assets - IMF F&D Magazine (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- Destrabar el patrimonio público ● Ejercicio de equilibrio ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2018\n  - Destrabar el patrimonio público ● Ejercicio de equilibrio ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2018 (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Destrabar el patrimonio público ● Ejercicio de equilibrio ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2018 (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- Libérer la richesse publique\n  - Libérer la richesse publique (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Libérer la richesse publique (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- Приумножить богатство общества – Финансы и развитие – март 2018 года\n  - Приумножить богатство общества – Финансы и развитие – март 2018 года (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Приумножить богатство общества – Финансы и развитие – март 2018 года (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- 开启公共财富之门 - <金融与发展, 2018年3月号·第55卷·第1期, 国际货币基金组织季刊\n  - 开启公共财富之门 - <金融与发展, 2018年3月号·第55卷·第1期, 国际货币基金组织季刊 (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - 开启公共财富之门 - <金融与发展, 2018年3月号·第55卷·第1期, 国际货币基金组织季刊 (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- wp1395\n  - wp1395 (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - wp1395 (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2018/03/detter"
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    "Authors: DAG DETTER, STEFAN FOLSTER",
    "Published: March 1, 2018",
    "National and local governments own large portfolios of public assets—primarily real estate and government-owned companies—that are often undervalued and undermanaged.",
    "Better governance and professional, politically independent management could convert latent asset value into revenue streams to fund budgets, lower taxes, or finance infrastructure.",
    "Boston (reported figures):",
    "Copenhagen’s By og Havn (City and Port):",
    "Hamburg’s HafenCity:",
    "Hong Kong SAR’s MTR Corporation:",
    "IMF 2013 context:",
    "Authors’ estimates:",
    "Conservative global yield improvement example:",
    "Institutional performance benchmarks:",
    "Boston Logan Airport hypothetical:",
    "Inventory and valuation gaps:",
    "Democratic and governance costs:",
    "Operational performance:",
    "Accounting and transparency:",
    "Create independent governance structures:",
    "Policy actions being taken:",
    "Over the coming decades, technological disruption and globalization will open new opportunities for multifunctional uses of public assets (for example, self-driving cars freeing parking space; revamping harbors, airports, and transport infrastructure).",
    "Success depends on transparent accounting of owned assets and government policies that promote creation of value through professional and independent asset management.",
    "**تحرير الثروة العامة**",
    "**Unlocking Public Wealth: Governments and Public Assets - IMF F&D Magazine**",
    "**Destrabar el patrimonio público ● Ejercicio de equilibrio ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2018**",
    "**Libérer la richesse publique**",
    "**Приумножить богатство общества – Финансы и развитие – март 2018 года**",
    "**开启公共财富之门 - <金融与发展>, 2018年3月号·第55卷·第1期, 国际货币基金组织季刊**",
    "**_wp1395**"
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