The valuation of assets is probably the most important decision regulators will face for a network business dominated by fixed costs because depreciation and the return to capital derived from this valuation will account for well over half of total costs.

In some recent work for Fiji, there was some debate about whether assets should be based on ‘actual’ or ‘replacement’ costs. As the following report shows, my view is that both theory and practice support the use of replacement costs. Asset valuation-revised-1