A Study of Fixed Asset Management Practice and its Challenges with special reference to Public Sector of North Shewa Zone in Oromia Region of Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Fixed asset management in public sectors is one of the most challenging areas in many countries of the world. Business sectors give critical attention to managing their long-term assets properly and avoid unnecessary holding of these assets. Moreover, they record, depreciate and dispose of the assets properly. However, this is not practical in local public sector. As a result, the problem is various and very high in Ethiopia. Excessive holding and failing to value, depreciate and dispose of the assets are the main challenges, and due to these challenges the loss resulting from mismanagement of the assets is substantial. Therefore the study was designed to assess practice and challenges of fixed asset management by public sectors in North Shewa Zone. Types of research design which is incorporated for this study was descriptive research design and Data also collected from primary and secondary source of data and the collected data was analyzed by using descriptive techniques on the data that was collected from 364 respondents. The major finding indicates that, the practice of procurement and property management department ineffective on planning process, enforcement of rules and directives and organizational structure and accountability system, due to procurement plan beyond each department needs and request, absence of disposal plan, absence of disposal committee and their functionality, poor property documentation, poor concern and commitment of the officials and awareness and skill gap on public property administration, therefore, to alleviate those problems the researchers recommend government and concerned bodies on the following concerns such as to enhance effective property management practice government should work on improving of staff professional competency, giving clarity on government owned property management rules, regulation, directives and manual, procurement and public property administration department and concerned bodies should committed for all stage in property management.

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