The College of Economists of Catalonia and the Catalan Association of Accounting and Management, chaired by Oriol Amat, full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), will present on November 3 in Barcelona the book “Els costos ABC a l’Administració Pública: el cas de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona” (ABC costs in the Public Administration: the case of the Barcelona City Council), where the pioneering cost model implemented by the City Council of Barcelona is exhibited. Designed throughout 2012, it’s based on the ABC methodology (Activity Based Costing) and takes as technical and practical references the models of the City Council of Sant Cugat del Vallès and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, both developed more than of a decade.
The cost model should allow improving efficiency in the management of public resources by obtaining information for decision-making, publishing and communicating the results to raise awareness and make the public responsible and at the same time respond to the legal regulations that introduce the need to know the costs of the different activities of the corporations.
“It’s about using this information as a real tool to prepare the budgets for each year, and to provide, in the allocation of resources that come from the priorities and political decisions, the rational component that makes them consistent from the point of view of the sustainability of public finances -say the authors of this guide-. In no case does the cost analysis have to question or invalidate political decisions of any kind, it’s only about incorporating useful information by the political decision-maker that allows the evaluation of an environment of limited resources and limited the quantitative consequences, in the present and in the future, of the decisions taken”.
