FASAB issues guidance on public-private partnerships

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board released guidance Tuesday on implementing the disclosure requirements for public-private partnerships with the federal government.

Technical Release 24: Implementation Guidance for SFFAS 49, Public-Private Partnerships, aims to help entities report in accordance with Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards  49, Public-Private Partnerships: Disclosure Requirements, which was issued in April 2016. Ever since then, practitioners have faced implementation challenges with the standard.

The new guidance aims to help them overcome those problems while ensuring they provide concise, meaningful and transparent disclosures that aren't duplicative, and FASAB's financial reporting objectives are met while mitigating the burden on financial statement preparers.

"This TR reflects FASAB's commitment to work closely with the community in order to provide additional clarity and guidance to help reduce potential burden while increasing financial transparency concerning P3s," said FASAB executive director Monica Valentine, who also chairs the Accounting Standards Implementation Committee, in a statement.

FASAB said the technical release can also serve as an acceptable analogy for other statements in addition to the ones addressed by this particular release. While the implementation guidance doesn't specifically address other types of federal activities, such as direct loans or loan guarantees, FASAB believes that reporting entities could consider this proposed TR when applying SFFAS 34, The Hierarchy of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Including the Application of Standards Issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, to other types of private-public partnership arrangements or transactions.