Abstract

Fixed asset management has been a challenge despite having government policies and procedures in Local Government Authorities in Tanzania. The study investigated the factors which influence fixed asset management in Local Government Authorities, and analysis was carried out to determine the extent to which each of the individual factors influence fixed asset losses. The significance of this study stems from the fact that, the government of Tanzania has had steady losses of an average of 70 billion a year for a period of five years starting in 2009. This situation has prompted the government to seek for informed interventions to combat these losses as these assets deliver important services to the public. This comes as an intervention to analyse these factors, the extent of their influences and therefore provide more information to government procedure reviewers on strategies and guidelines on quick-wins, high impact and foundational intervention to help improve asset management procedures. The Likert scale questionnaires were used to collect data from these LGAs. The data were collected from 9 LGAs and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) data analysis tool. Discriminant analysis was employed and it was observed that, there is a wide variation in LGAs asset losses intervention requirements. Through the analysis, physical counting versus record difference was found to be more critical followed by scope of asset tracking. In this paper, these findings and discussion which sets the basis for the recommendations that we herein put forth are presented.

Key words: Local Government Authorities, asset losses, accountability, framework, asset management, extent of influence, intervention, fixed assets.