Public Reporting on State-Owned Enterprises : Managing the Relationship between SOE Aggregate Reporting and Public Sector Consolidated Financial Statements

State-owned enterprises (SOEs), entities that provide goods or services on a commercial basis and are controlled by the state, are major economic actors in most countries. SOEs typically deliver essential public services such as access to water, electricity, telecommunications, or transportation. Poorly performing SOEs can be a major drain on the public purse, often requiring state support to maintain operations and posing significant fiscal risks. However, in many partner countries, high-quality, reliable, and publicly available financial and operational information on the SOE portfolio (including enterprises in which the state holds a significant minority stake) is limited. As a result, there is an increasing need and demand for governments to strengthen monitoring of SOE performance and to improve transparency in reporting on the sector. The objective of this note is to examine two distinct but related practices for public reporting on SOEs, aggregate reporting and public sector consolidated financial statements, and suggest options for governments to manage the two processes efficiently