THE Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) disclosed on Monday that as of December 2020, some P1.3 trillion worth of the government’s nonfinancial assets have been included in the National Asset Registry System (NARS).
In a statement, National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon said the NARS, which provides the government with a consolidated database of its nonfinancial, strategically important assets, has an initial 533,925 asset data count in its system.
The BTr launched the NARS in 2017 to maintain a reliable inventory of the national government’s nonfinancial 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 nonfinancial assets, thus enabling more efficient financial risk management, enhanced service delivery, and improved risk reduction for sustainable asset management in the long term,” De Leon said.
De Leon said the assets includes 348,938 school buildings under the Department of Education (DepEd); 8,337 bridges and 33,119 kilometers (km) of roads under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); and 247 irrigation facilities and dams maintained by the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).
The NARS database includes 122 social welfare centers of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DWSD) and 1,580 towers of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
The list also contains 15 power plants under the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM); 268 government hospitals; and 68 rehabilitation centers under the Department of Health (DOH).
“The BTr 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 [Jica],” De Leon said.
As the BTr further expands the initiative, they are looking at other strategically important assets to include in their inventory. Helping select 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).
Based on the JMC, the Philippine government asset management policy is aimed at “increasing the efficiency, improving decision-making, managing risks better and reducing costs in government.”
De Leon said in tandem with the GSIS, the BTr aims to successfully place by mid-2021 the policy for the National Indemnity Insurance Program (NIIP), which will cover nonfinancial assets like school buildings, bridges and roads in the National Capital Region (NCR) and the country’s eastern seaboard.
She said BTr is also coordinating with the DepEd and DPWH on the revalidation of data on the schools, roads and bridges to be listed under the NIIP to determine those that were damaged with the series of natural calamities in 2020, and review the requirements and timelines for the policy to factor in asset changes and current market sentiment.
The NIIP, an initiative led by the BTr, aims to provide adequate and comprehensive insurance protection to socioeconomically important government assets against perils such as typhoons, floods, storm surges, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.
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