The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) has covered trillions worth of non-financial government assets such as roads, school buildings and power plants for inclusion in the National Asset Registry System (NARS), the Department of Finance (DOF) said.
National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon said the NARS, which provides the government with a consolidated database of its non-financial, strategically important assets, has an initial 533,925 asset data count in its system.
As of December last year, P1.3 trillion-worth of non-financial government assets have been included in the NARS, de Leon said.
These include 348,938 school buildings under the Department of Education; 8,337 bridges and 33,119 kilometers of roads under the Department of Public Works and Highways; and 247 irrigation facilities and dams maintained by the National Irrigation Administration.
She said this NARS database also lists 122 social welfare centers of the Department of Social Welfare and Development; 1,580 towers of the Department of Information and Communications Technology; 15 power plants under the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.; and 268 government hospitals and 68 rehabilitation centers under the Department of Health.
In 2017, the treasury launched the NARS to maintain a reliable inventory of the national government’s non-financial assets and help in the monitoring, inspection and validation and management of assets under custody by the National Government.
“The NARS provides the government a consolidated database of its strategically important non-financial assets, thus enabling more efficient financial risk management, enhance service delivery, and improve risk reduction for sustainable asset management in the long term,” De Leon said.
She said the treasury is currently working on enhancing the NARS to a web-based portal and with more functionalities with the help of development partners such as the World Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency.
As the treasury further expands the initiative, they are looking at other strategically important assets to include in their inventory.
Supporting in the selection of these assets is the DBCC Technical Working Group on Asset Management as stated by Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 2020-1 or the Philippine Government Asset Management Policy (PGAMP). A Philippine government asset management policy is aimed at “increasing the efficiency, improving decision-making, managing risks better and reducing costs in government,” the joint circular said.