There are many reasons why governments will wish to report on PPPs. These include promoting good governance and transparency of government activities, accountability, sound financial management, macroeconomic planning, international comparison, supervision and control. There are different ways of reporting, each serving a specific purpose.
The accounting treatment of PPPs serves primarily to promote good governance and accountability. Each PPP transaction is reported at the project or micro-level in central (or local/regional) government accounts and classified either as a government asset or a non-government (private) asset. This classification is done in accordance with national accounting standards for the public sector. These standards are applied on a country by country basis: each country is allowed to decide which standards it wants to use. In practice, the accounting treatment would normally be carried out by accountants of the central (or local/regional) government.
The statistical treatment of PPPs refers to the reporting of PPP activities for reasons of macroeconomic planning, international comparison, supervision and control. PPPs are reported in the "National Accounts", which EU Member States are obliged to prepare to a common format. The statistical treatment of PPPs provides the aggregate value of PPPs (i.e. the total capital value of all national PPP activity) in National Accounts in accordance with specific statistical rules defined at international level. For the EU, these rules are set out in the European System of Integrated Economic Accounts. The statistical treatment is carried out by national statistical offices (often with the involvement of representatives of national central banks and ministries of finance) and reported to Eurostat.
Budgeting procedures are a third way of planning and reporting government activities in PPPs. They are aimed at promoting a sound financial management. Budgetary procedures plan (ex-ante) and report (ex-post) government allocation of resources for capital investment programmes and operational expenditures in national (or local/regional) budget laws. This paper does not deal in detail with budgeting procedures.
It is therefore important to highlight that the accounting, statistical and budgeting treatments refer to different ways of reporting PPPs, to different audiences, in different formats and with different intentions.