Identification of the level of risk in terms of municipal excessive indebtedness and its financial determinants

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the level of risk in terms of municipal debt and to show the financial determinants of this phenomenon. The analysis covered the years 2008-2016. An example of rural communes in Poland has been used. The research has been divided into two parts. First, it was examined whether there was indeed a problem of over-indebtedness. For this purpose, the ratio of the share of liabilities in total income, which was presented in the box-plot chart, was used. Selected methods of descriptive statistics were also used. In general, the debt of the analyzed units increased until 2011, after which it systematically decreased. It was found that the problem of over-indebtedness concerns several dozen local governments, while in recent years the level of the surveyed indicator reached the highest values. In the second part of the research, the analyzed communes were divided into four classes of debt level in order to check the shape of selected financial indicators in these classes. This was to check what financial determinants could have influenced the occurrence of the above-mentioned risk. The analysis of the psedotest value proved that all selected variables appeared to be characteristic of separate classes, and the analysis of variance confirmed the dependence that the higher the debt class, the higher the level of EU funds obtained and the share of own revenues in total income was higher. This means that there is no lack of resources, but rather overinvestment was the cause of problems in the financial management of these local governments. What should be taken as an obvious level of indebtedness determined the costs of its service and influenced the occurrence of matured payables on a larger scale.