Metadata: Investment efforts

Flemish public administration: Department for Finance and Budget, Institute for National Accounts, National Bank of Belgium

Local authorities: Agency for Home Affairs

Flemish authorities

In discussions about investments at the Flemish level, different actors gave different interpretations to this concept in the past. In consultation with the Flemish Parliament, the Department for Finance and Budget has developed a presentation method that is based on the classification used in government accounts according to the ESA system. ESA is the European standard for national and regional accounts and is therefore comparable across Europe. ESA is used by the Member States of the European Union and was updated in 2014 (ESA 2010).

Concept of ‘investment efforts’

For the monitoring of the investment efforts made by the Flemish authorities, not only the investments in the strict sense are monitored, but also the subsidies or contributions to others, with a view to investments made by them (investment contributions).

The investment efforts of the Flemish authorities include:

• investments in fixed assets
• gross investments in fixed tangible and intangible assets
• other net purchases of non-financial assets (mainly land)
• investment contributions or subsidies to third parties: capital transfers to support investments by third parties (all bodies outside the Flemish authorities)

The amounts refer to the realised transactions, not to the estimated figures from the budget and its revisions.

The data on investments in fixed tangible and intangible assets concern the balance of expenditure and revenue. For the investment contributions or subsidies, it only concerns the expenditure.

These are always gross amounts, without deduction of depreciation.

Local authorities

It concerns data that was drawn up in accordance with the standards of the policy and management cycle 2012 (beleids- en beheerscyclus or BBC) of the Flemish authorities. This cycle was progressively introduced in local authorities from 2011 to 2014. The dates of the financial years before the introduction of BBC were converted to the BBC schedule. The BBC 2014 regulations were evaluated and adjusted and resulted in BBC 2020. Starting in 2019, a number of local authorities applied BBC 2020 as a pilot. In 2019, therefore, both annual accounts according to BBC 2019 and BBC 2020 were submitted to the councils.

The aim is to achieve maximum comparability between the Flemish authorities and the local authorities for the core statistic of ‘investment efforts’. That is why the ‘investment efforts’ are presented for the local authorities with the same components:

• investments in fixed tangible and intangible assets, including land
• investment contributions or subsidies to third parties

The figures come from the annual accounts of the local authorities. It mainly concerns adopted annual accounts that have been discussed by the municipal council and the PCSW council. In addition, there are also a limited number of provisional, unadopted annual accounts. The annual accounts are only final after approval by the governor and the competent minister.

The amounts refer to the realised transactions, not to the estimated figures from the budget and its revisions.

The data on investments in fixed tangible and intangible assets concern the balance of expenditure and revenue. For the investment contributions or subsidies, it only concerns the expenditure.

These are always gross amounts, without deduction of depreciation.

Local authorities:

• Municipal authorities, including the districts of the city of Antwerp
• Public centres for social welfare (PCSWs)
• Autonomous municipal companies
• Welfare associations
• Provincial authorities
• Autonomous provincial companies

The other local authorities, such as police districts and relief zones, are not included in the figures.

Number of inhabitants

For the calculation of the investment efforts per inhabitant of the Flemish municipalities, the number of inhabitants on 1 January of the year in question is used as the denominator.

In the case of both the Flemish authorities and the local authorities, this always concerns amounts in current prices. These are prices for the year in question, not adjusted for inflation.

The Department for Finance and Budget, the Agency for Home Affairs, the Institute for National Accounts and the National Bank of Belgium provide reliable data on the financial transactions of the Flemish authorities.

For the local authorities, figures are used from the authorities that have already reported their annual accounts to the Agency for Home Affairs at the time of compiling the statistics.

Flemish authorities

• Department for Finance and Budget: Website(opens in new window)
• Institute of National Accounts: Website(opens in new window)
• National Bank of Belgium: Public finance database(opens in new window)

Local authorities
Agency for Home Affairs: BBC - data and analyses (in Dutch)

Investment efforts