Definition: Acquisition of equity in public units

Category: National accounts

This category excludes any payment conditional on the acquisition of fixed capital and payments in kind: these should be recorded as investment grants.  An important characteristic of an injection of equity is that the public unit should have freedom to use the funds in the way it thinks best to increase the value of the business.  There are three cases:
 a.  Government is the only shareholder in the public unit;
 b.  Government and some other units are partners in ownership;
 c.  Government owns tradable shares in the public unit