Chong-Hyun Nam

English

Research Papers in Economics

This PDF is a selection from a published volume from the
National Bureau of Economic Research
Volume Title: Fiscal Policy and Management in East Asia,
NBER-EASE, Volume 16
Volume Author/Editor: Takatoshi Ito and Andrew K. Rose,
editors
Volume Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Volume ISBN: 978-0-226-38681-2
Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/ito_07-1
Conference Date: June 23-25, 2005
Publication Date: October 2007
Title: Comment on "Reforming the Fiscal Management System
in Korea"
Author: Chong-Hyun Nam
URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0899The total public burden including direct liabilities and guarantees was
around 33 to 34 percent of GDP. On the other hand, the author notes a
worrisome feature of Korean public ﬁnance: the pension schemes have too
generous beneﬁts in relation to contributions. A rapidly aging population
creates an imbalance between the expected beneﬁts and the contributions
with the former outgrowing the latter. The aging population also implies an
increase in health expenditure, projected to rise to as much as 25 to 30 per-
cent in 2070. Age-related expenditures, that is, the pension and health ex-
penditures, create pressure on ﬁscal sustainability.
The weak side of Korean ﬁscal management is the budget. The complex
structure of the budget reduces allocative eﬃciency and transparency.
However, the government has to be lauded for serious eﬀorts to strengthen
transparency and accountability by reviewing various funds with the ob-
jective of abolishing obsolete funds and consolidating those with similar
objectives. The problem of reducing the number of special accounts has re-
mained an outstanding issue and will certainly merit greater action by the
authorities in the near future.
An important reform is the introduction of the MTEF, which moves the
budgeting process away from microscopic control of line items to the stra-
tegic alignment of budget requests with overall policy directions. The focus
should be on outputs and outcomes rather than the traditional control of
inputs. The author has several suggestions to improve the MTEF and one
item stands out as a crucial area needing government attention: risk anal-
ysis and management, more speciﬁcally, the explicit and implicit contin-
gent liabilities of the government arising from loan guarantees, public cor-
porations, local governments, and others.
Another critical reform objective is the introduction of performance mon-
itoring and evaluation. If adopted, this will improve the transparency of the
budget process and eﬀectiveness of various government interventions.
This interesting chapter encourages one to await the author’s next report
on the progress made by the government in pursuing the ﬁscal reforms
highlighted therein.
Comment Chong-Hyun Nam
This is a very interesting and highly informative chapter. It consists of,
largely, two parts. The ﬁrst part presents an excellent survey on the devel-
opment of the public sector in the Korean economy, and the second part
evaluates institutional reforms that have been taking place in Korea in re-
336 Youngsun Koh
Chong-Hyun Nam is professor of economics at Korea University.cent years, suggesting almost an exhaustive list of recommendations as to
how the reform can be shaped better for now and in the future.
The chapter is by and large self-explaining, and I have little in disagree-
ment with whatever Koh writes. I have only a couple of quick comments on
each part of the chapter.
First of all, I would have liked to see it more focused. The focus may be
placed on the role of public ﬁnance that has played in the process of Ko-
rea’s economic development. It is well known that a single most important
goal that the Korean government has pursued, all along over the past forty
years or so, is rapid economic growth. Almost every means that is available
for policymakers has been mobilized to achieve this goal in one way or an-
other. I believe ﬁscal policy has been no exception.
I think table 9.2 in the chapter provides some useful clues in that regard.
The table shows that, as of 2000/2001, the share of capital outlays in total
government’s expenditure in Korea amounts to 8.3 percent of GDP, which
is conspicuously higher than those for other countries compared in the
table. This contrasts sharply to the share of transfers, which is substantially
lower at only 3 percent of GDP in the corresponding year. Table 9.4 also
provides a good indicator on this score. The table shows that the share of
government expenditure on economic aﬀairs has not only been large, but
has also been increasing over time. The share of spending on economic
aﬀairs, for instance, shows a slightly declining trend over the 1970 to 1990
period to 3.6 percent from 4.6 percent of GDP, but it climbs back to an
even higher level of 6.2 percent of GDP by 2003.
What does all this mean? This may mean that Korea’s public sector has
been heavily used, or abused for that matter, as a means of domestic capi-
tal formation, possibly replacing private sectors. This kind of ﬁscal policy
may have continued to be in use, even long after Korea joined the OECD
in 1996. A natural question to be asked is, then, to what extent and at the
cost of what has the public sector been used as an instrument to achieve
rapid growth in Korea? The author may be interested in exploring this is-
sue further.
Another minor point that I want to mention is that nowhere in the chap-
ter has the role of local governments as a player in the public sector been
discussed. I believe local governments have also been an integral part of the
public sector in a broader sense, and may be worthy of mention.
Let me now turn to the second part of the chapter to make a couple of
comments. One is concerned with the structure of the budget, and the other
with budget process.
I think the author correctly argues that special accounts and various
funds are more prone to abuse than general accounts, since they are more
likely to suﬀer from lack of transparency, accountability, and eﬃciency.
Among special accounts and funds, the latter can be more problematic be-
Reforming the Fiscal Management System in Korea 337cause they tend to remain unattended by the National Assembly, and,
therefore, may fall exclusively in the hands of government’s bureaucrats,
which represents another interest group by itself.
This is not too surprising to me because funds are often managed like a
protection scheme in international trade. Though they are often being in-
troduced with very good reasons or causes, once installed, they become ex-
tremely diﬃcult to get rid of. This is because interest groups beneﬁting from
the funds, and inﬂuence-seeking government’s bureaucrats, may work to-
gether to make the funds outlive their needs.
Figure 9.15 in the chapter seems interesting in this regard. The ﬁgure
shows that during the past 34 years, the share of special accounts and funds
in the consolidated budget keeps decreasing for the ﬁrst half of the period,
but increasing for the second half of the period. What does it mean? It
means that government’s budget structure has been drifting toward more
ineﬃcient structure lately. I hope it is not true, but one can hardly deny that
the Korean government has become more a populist regime in recent years
than ever before.
Considering that the share of special accounts and of funds in the total
consolidated budget has grown to as high as 16 and 29 percent, respec-
tively, as of 2004, it seems worthy to investigate further into the causes and
consequences of that.
My ﬁnal comment is about the medium-term expenditure framework
(MTEF), which was introduced in 2004, as a new budget process in Korea.
I recall vividly that the issue of the MTEF was hotly discussed among the
government and academic circle as early as in the early 1980s. I wonder
why it took so long before such a useful scheme as the MTEF was intro-
duced only in 2004?
338 Youngsun Koh

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