En el presente trabajo se realiza un análisis del uso de los recursos públicos destinados a salud y educación. El objetivo es evaluar la “calidad” del gasto territorial con recursos del Sistema General de Participaciones –SGP-, a partir del estudio de la eficiencia relativa. Para este fin se emplea la metodología del Análisis Envolvente de Datos, enfatizando en estos dos sectores debido a que representan aproximadamente un 96% de los recursos provenientes del SGP. Los resultados indican que la eficiencia promedio en la cobertura se encuentra en 62,3 y 63,4% para educación y salud, respectivamente. En calidad la eficiencia en educación solo llega al 48,8% y en salud al 50,6%. Ello implica que, sobre todo en calidad, los municipios requieren esfuerzos para mejorar su desempeño y la eficiencia con que emplean los recursos provenientes del SGP.

In this paper we analyze the efficiency with which resources from the central government are used for the provision of education and health services. The purpose is to evaluate the "quality" of public spending at the subnational level, specifically relative efficiency in the use of resources coming from the General System of Participations GSP. To this end, we employ the methodology known as Data Envelopment Analysis –DEA-, emphasizing in the case of education and health services, due to the fact that they represent around 96% of the funds coming from GSP. The results indicate that the average efficiency is 62.3% and 63.4% in the provision of education and health services, respectively. As to the case of the quality of those services, their efficiency reaches only 48.8% education in the case of education and 50.6% for health. This result indicates that the municipalities require additional efforts to improve performance and efficiency with which employ resources from the GSP, specially improving in the quality of the provision of those services.