5517.0 - Information Paper: Accruals-based Government Finance Statistics, 2000  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 13/03/2000   
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Contents >> Glossary

    Accrual recording

        A recording method in which revenues, expenses, lending and borrowing are recorded as they are earned, accrued or incurred regardless of when payment is made or received.

    Assets
        Instruments or entities over which ownership rights are enforced by institutional units and from which economic benefits may be derived by holding them, or using them, over a period of time. Two types of assets are distinguished: financial and non-financial.
    Australian Accounting Standards (AAS)
        Specific accounting policies developed and promulgated by the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) and the Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (PSASB). The principal standard applicable to the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments is AAS 31 ‘Financial Reporting by Governments’, issued by the PSASB.
    Australian System of National Accounts (ASNA)
        A set of statistics, compiled in accordance with the principles expounded in SNA93 (see below), which include annual and quarterly estimates of national income and expenditure, input-output tables, State accounts, estimates of capital stock, financial accounts, and national balance sheets.
    Balance Sheet
        A statement of an entity’s financial position at a specific point in time. Contains information on assets, liabilities and owners’ equity at a specific date. Also called Statement of Financial Position or Statement of Assets and Liabilities.
    Cash
        Cash includes cash on hand and cash equivalents. Cash on hand consists of notes and coins held, and deposits held at call with a bank or financial institution. Cash equivalents are highly liquid investments which are readily convertible to cash on hand at the investor’s discretion.
    Cash accounting
        An accounting method in which entries are recorded when cash payments are made or received.
    Cash Flow Statement
        The Cash Flow Statement identifies how cash is generated from, and applied to, operating, investing and financing activities of a public sector unit.
    Change in GFS Net Worth (INW)
        The difference between Net Worth at the beginning of a period and Net Worth at the end of that period.
    Economic Type Framework (ETF)
        A hierarchically structured classification, used in GFS, for categorising stocks and flows into economic groups.
    Financial Assets and Liabilities (FALS)
        Statistics previously produced to describe selected financial assets and liabilities of the public sector.
    Flows
        Flows are economic events and other occurrences that cause changes in the value of stocks through the creation, transformation, exchange, transfer or extinction of value. They consist of transactions, revaluations and other changes in the volume of assets.
    General government
        A GFS sector comprising resident public institutional units which are mainly engaged in the production of goods and services outside the normal market mechanism for consumption by governments and the general public. Costs of production are mainly financed from public tax revenues. Goods and services are provided free of charge or at nominal charges well below costs of production.
    General purpose financial reports of governments
        The requirement of AAS 31 that all governments prepare and publish general purpose accrual-based reports for the consolidated sum of all entities controlled by each government, as well as encouragement for their dis-aggregation into each broad sector of government activity.
    GFS Expenses
        Transactions which decrease Net Worth in the reporting period.
    GFS Net Lending/Borrowing
        Defined as the Net Operating Balance less Net acquisition of non-financial assets.
    GFS Net Operating Balance
        Calculated as GFS Revenues minus GFS Expenses. It is equivalent to the Increase in Net Worth arising from transactions.
    GFS Net Worth
        Defined as Assets less Liabilities less Shares and other contributed capital. For the general government sector, Net Worth is Assets less Liabilities since shares and contributed capital is zero.
    GFS Operating Statement
        A statement which presents details of transactions in revenues, expenses and the net acquisition of non-financial assets, and derives the GFS Net Operating Balance and GFS Net Lending/Borrowing measures.
    GFS Revenues
        Transactions which increase Net Worth in the reporting period. Government Finance Statistics (GFS) Statistics that are compiled by summarising the individual stocks and flows of governments and organising them into meaningful categories appropriate for analysis, planning and policy determination.
    Government Financial Estimates (GFE)
        The publication Government Financial Estimates (Cat. no. 5501.0) which contains forward or budget estimates in respect of the Commonwealth, State, Territory and local governments and their public non-financial corporations.
    IMF Manual on Government Finance Statistics, 1986
        The 1986 edition of the manual released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) outlining a set of international statistical standards for the compilation and presentation of government finance statistics.
    Jurisdiction
        The Commonwealth government and each of the State and Territory governments. The term also includes local governments but is used less frequently in this context.
    Liabilities
        Obligations to provide economic value to other institutional units.
    Multi-jurisdictional sector
        The sector consisting of public units for which control is shared between two or more governments (e.g. public universities).
    Net Debt
        The difference between selected liabilities and selected financial assets (deposits held, advances received and borrowing less cash and deposits, advances paid, and investments, loans and placements).
    Non-financial public sector
        The sector formed through a consolidation of the general government and public non-financial corporation sub-sectors.
    Other Changes in the Volume of Assets
        Stock changes, such as discoveries of new assets and depletion or destruction of existing assets, that are not a result of transactions or revaluations.
    Public Financial Corporations
        Resident public enterprises mainly engaged in acquiring financial assets and incurring liabilities in the financial market on their own account.
    Public Non-financial Corporations
        Resident public enterprises mainly engaged in the production of goods and services of a non-financial nature for sale in the market place at economically significant prices.
    Revaluations
        Changes to stocks that arise as a result of price movements, including exchange rate movements.
    System of National Accounts, 1993 (SNA93)
        The System of National Accounts 1993 is a framework for the production of economic accounts, developed jointly by the Commission of the European Communities, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations and the World Bank.
    Statement of Stocks and Flows
        A statement showing the opening balances of assets and liabilities, the related flows during the reporting period and the closing balances.
    Stocks
        Holdings of assets and liabilities, at a point in time, valued at market prices prevailing at that time.
    Surplus/Deficit Net
        cash from operating activities plus net cash from investments in non-financial assets less distributions paid less acquisitions of assets under finance leases and similar arrangements.
    Transactions
        Changes to stocks that come about as a result of mutually agreed interactions between institutional units. Also included as transactions are certain items, such as depreciation, that do not involve interaction with other institutional units. The recording of such ‘internal' transactions recognises that an institutional unit can act simultaneously in two capacities of economic interest.
    Uniform Presentation Agreement (UPA)
        An agreement at the 1991 Premiers’ Conference that the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments would present, as part of their budget or related documentation, a minimum set of statistics on a standard (ABS) GFS basis according to an agreed format commonly referred to as the Uniform Presentation Framework (UPF). The original UPF has been recently revised to accommodate the move to accruals-based accounting and GFS statistics.





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