NYC Bonds

To Our Investor Community:

With no bond sales for NYC during the month of October, the financial highlight of the month is the release of the City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or Annual Report.

Fiscal 2016 City Audited Financial Statements (Annual Report) Released

As required by City Charter, on October 31st Comptroller Stringer released the City’s Annual Report for fiscal year 2016, which ended June 30, 2016. In addition to the financial statements, the Annual Report provides supplemental financial and statistical information about the City and important financial statement data for the City’s five pension systems, other closely-related entities such as New York City Health + Hospitals and City-related bond issuers such as the NYC Municipal Water Finance Authority and  the NYC Transitional Finance Authority. These related issuers also posted their own financial statements, which can be found on their respective websites.

Also, for the first time, this year’s Annual Report includes detailed information about the City’s tax abatement programs to help members of the public understand specific abatements’ purposes, program qualifications and requirements, and how tax abatements affect the City’s bottom line. Although the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement #77 requires these disclosures by Fiscal Year 2017, the Comptroller’s Office chose to provide this transparency a year early.

For the 36th consecutive time, the City’s prior year Annual Report was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association. The 2016 Annual Report will be submitted for review for this award.

Highlights from the FY16 Annual Report include:

New York City’s Finances and Economy

• For the 36th year in a row, New York City completed the fiscal year with a General Fund surplus. In FY16, the General Fund surplus was $5 million.
• The City’s Real Gross Product grew 3.1 percent, nearly double the national GDP growth of 1.7 percent in FY16.
• New York City added 98,100 private-sector jobs, driving down citywide unemployment to 5.3 percent, the lowest rate since FY08. More than half of these new jobs were in medium and high-wage sectors, bucking a five-year long trend of job growth primarily in low-wage industries.
• As of June 30, 2016 the Comptroller’s Bureau of Asset Management had $165.2 billion of assets under management for the New York City Retirement Systems.
• The City, the New York City Transitional Finance Authority, and the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority issued a total of $9.76 billion of long-term bonds to finance the City’s capital program and refinance higher coupon bonds for interest savings. The refundings will generate $770.65 million in budgetary savings over the lifetime of the bonds.

For additional information you may reference our press release or download a copy of the Annual Report.

Looking Ahead

We expect the New York City Municipal Water Finance to enter the market in November. More information on the sale will become available as we get closer to the sale date. You can subscribe to receive sale announcements and other City publications and reports. The New York State Comptroller also maintains a website with a preliminary forward calendar for major State and City issuers.

As always, we appreciate your interest in New York City bonds. Please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions as to how we can improve our investor communications.

Carol S. Kostik
Deputy Comptroller for Public Finance